THE DOOMED DESTROYER—USS PEARY (DD-226)
When unopposed Japanese bombers destroyed it, the Cavite Navy Yard was jammed with ships franctically being readied to fight an all-too-sudden war. One of them was the old four-stack destroyer Peary, flagship of Destroyer Division 59, which several days earlier had been in a near-fatal collision with the destroyer Pillsbury. Both ships were moored at Central Wharf. The next pier over, Machina Wharf, was so crowded that two fleet-type submarines, the Seadragon and Sealion, were tied up side by side, the Seadragon being next to the dock. Hull to hull with the Sealion lay the minesweeper Bittern. At the head of Machina Wharf was moored the big submarine tender Otus.
Several vessels, including the minesweeper Whippoorwill, the submarine rescue vessel Pigeon, and the yacht Isabel, sometimes referred to as a gunboat, were anchored off the navy yard. A few hundred yards beyond them, navy PBY seaplanes rode serenely at their moorings. Anchored in the harbor off Manila were more than forty merchant ships and the submarine tenders Holland and Canopus, around which were nested numerous submarines. The time was 1245 on 10 December 1941.
Suddenly, the mid-day calm was shattered by the gut-shrinking wail of air-raid sirens. This, coupled with the word that bombers were heading for the yard, sent all hands racing to battle stations. Ships with steam up immediately got under way to seek maneuvering room in Manila Bay. Submarines, at four-engine speed, moved from their tenders to find deep water in which to hide. The seaplanes, as quickly as crews could be put on board, scrambled to get out of the area. Marines unlimbered their nine, vintage 3-inch antiaircraft guns and a few .50-caliber machine guns, and stood by to defend the yard.
Twenty minutes after the alarm sounded, fifty-four enemy bombers with fighter escort circled over Cavite. Guns boomed and black puffs of smoke from bursting shells pockmarked the sky, but it was all in vain. Not a gun in the area could reach the planes flying at 19,000 feet. Unruffled, the Japanese pilots casually selected their targets. With murderous accuracy, tons of bombs rained down on the yard, which at once erupted into an inferno of death and destruction. Ruptured oil tanks belched raging yellow flames and black smoke. As machine shops, warehouses, barracks, and buildings of all descriptions crumbled, they were engulfed in flames. Even the docks were afire. In less than an hour, all of Cavite Navy Yard was reduced to a molten pile of rubble. More than 500 civilian workers and military personnel lay dead or wounded.
Soon after the first bombs fell, the Pillsbury got under way and found relative safety in Manila Bay. But the Peary, her boilers decommissioned and fires dead, had no choice but to remain at the pier and take it. Her small-caliber guns were useless. Bombs from the first two waves of attackers burst close by, but did not damage her. The third wave straddled her with bombs. Some exploded on Central Wharf, others in the water alongside. One slammed into the fire-control platform on her foremast and detonated. Instantly, the mast jackknifed into three sections. White-hot shrapnel flew in all directions, gouging holes in her navigation bridge, torpedo directors, galley deckhouse, and stacks, and ignited small fires from stem to stern. The Peary’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Harry H. Keith, struck down by shrapnel, was seriously wounded in both legs. Many of his crew were dead or wounded.
Adding to the terror of bursting bombs were exploding air flasks in the blazing torpedo-overhaul shop on Machina Wharf. The Peary, powerless to move away from the holocaust, was doomed. Lieutenant Commander Charles A. Ferriter, commanding the minesweeper Whippoorwill, realizing the destroyer’s desperate situation, bravely took his ship to the rescue. With all hoses streaming water to help counter the intense heat, he maneuvered the “Whip” in between Central and Machina Wharfs, and nosed her bow against the Peary’s stern. A 6-inch hawser was passed to the Peary and made fast. Slowly, the “Whip” backed down. The heavy line stretched taut. When the Peary did not budge, Ferriter signaled the engine room for more turns. With a retort like the crack of a 3-inch gun, the line parted. Disheartened but not discouraged, Ferriter once more braved the mounting inferno on the dock. Another hawser was made fast, and again the “Whip” backed down. Again the line parted.
Flaming debris rained down on both ships. Heat and smoke from the ever-mounting fires made breathing painful. Ferriter could not understand why the Peary did not move. He was inclined to attribute the parting of the lines to the searing heat. If that was the cause, he couldn’t possibly get the destroyer out. His own ship was in one hell of a dangerous spot, and he was torn between abandoning the Peary to a horrible fate and risking the loss of the Whippoorwill and his crew.
Defeat, however, did not come easy to Ferriter. Like a boxer gamely struggling to his feet after a second knockdown, he headed the “Whip” back for one last, desperate attempt. All at once it occurred to him that the Peary might still have lines secured to the dock. As he closed her, he shouted for the Peary’s crew to check her mooring lines. Sure enough, in the confusion that reigned in the destroyer, two lines had been overlooked. This time, the “Whip” backed down pulling the Peary clear of the danger zone.
At the same time, a similar magnificent rescue effort was under way. The big fleet-type submarines alongside Machina Wharf had not escaped the fury of Japanese bombs. The Sealion had been sunk and the Seadragon’s conning tower slashed by flying fragments of steel. The minesweeper Bittern, outboard of them, was on fire. There were dead and wounded men in all three vessels. The Bittern, her fires not yet under control, moved out into Manila Bay. But fires on Machina Wharf, fed by oil from ruptured storage tanks, threatened to reduce the Seadragon to a cinder, wedged, as she was, to the wharf by the sunken Sealion. Fate, however, had not sounded her death knell. She was destined to put to sea and avenge this day by taking a heavy toll of Japanese shipping.
Lieutenant Hawes, commanding the Pigeon, seeing that the Seadragon was trapped, unhesitatingly went to the rescue. Although severely handicapped by a faulty rudder that seamen had to work with a hand winch, Hawes maneuvered the Pigeon close to the big boat. Despite the fierce heat, which scorched the Seadragon’s superstructure and blistered the Pigeon’s bridge and hull, a line was passed to the submarine. With the Seadragon’s engines pounding full ahead and the Pigeon’s full astern, the submarine was slowly worked into the channel, just as volumes of burning oil rolled over Machina Wharf.
Once the Peary was clear of the navy yard, men from the Whippoorwill went aboard her to help extinguish fires and tend the wounded. Five of the Peary’s eight officers had been wounded, one mortally. Eight of her 126 enlisted men had been killed and 15 wounded. Fifteen men were missing, and presumed to have been killed in the navy yard while making their way to the dispensary either in search of medical attention or carrying wounded buddies. Lieutenant Commander Keith, although grievously wounded, refused to be taken to the hospital until he was convinced his ship was safe and his dead and wounded men had been removed.
To make emergency repairs and get ready for sea, the destroyer put into a small shipyard in Manila that belonged to the Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Company. Facilities there were marginal at best, but the Peary’s engineering force, led by Lieutenant (jg) Arthur L. Gustafson, worked around the clock to do in two weeks what many considered could not be done in less than a month.
On 23 December 1941, the Peary carried out her first assignment of the war—patrolling for enemy submarines between Mindoro Island and the southwest coast of Luzon. By this time, casualties had been replaced and a new commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander John M. Bermingham, had reported on board.
The day after Christmas, the Peary was lying at anchor off Corregidor, not far from two merchant ships, as she waited for her captain to return from a conference on the “rock.” The first indication anyone had of enemy planes zeroing in on her came at about 1230 with the droning of motors high overhead. The wild clamor of the general alarm sent all hands scurrying to battle stations just as the first bombs landed. Nine of them exploded between the Peary and the two merchantmen, narrowly missing all three. The Peary’s executive officer, Lieutenant Martin M. Koivisto, immediately ordered up anchor and, at flank speed, headed the destroyer toward the center of Manila Bay. For the next two hours, she was subjected to attacks by twin-engine bombers flying high above the range of her guns. Only excellent shiphandling by Koivisto saved her from destruction. He needed all the cunning he had to outwit the enemy by slowing, backing, abruptly turning, and racing at full speed. Bombs exploding close to the Peary cut one of her signal halyards, severed a forestay, and threw water over her decks, but she suffered no serious damage and no casualties. For men whose nerves had not yet recovered from the navy yard ordeal, this was an especially harrowing experience. They were angry and depressed because their inadequate antiaircraft weapons did not give them a fighting chance against bombers.
At 2030, the Peary was ordered to proceed south at once and report to commander, Task Force 5, who was based in Java. This was welcome news. Everyone was delighted to get out of Manila Bay, where the Japanese had seemingly selected them for extinction. Not only that, but the thought of joining other ships of the Asiatic Fleet and operating under skies controlled by the Allies was exhilarating.
Early the next morning, Bermingham nosed the Peary into remote Campomanes Bay on the west coast of Negros Island. He planned to hide out during daylight hours because Japanese bombers were known to be combing the Philippines for Yankee targets. Deep water at Campomanes permitted him to run the ship close inshore and moor her, parallel to the beach, with fore and aft lines out to trees. As soon as she was secure, the crew went to work covering her with palm fronds and painting everything on her topside green. That done, they prayed the ship would be overlooked by enemy aircraft. There were many anxious moments on board the Peary that day as several flights of Japanese bombers passed directly overhead. But the ship, looking like a mere bulge on the shoreline, was not spotted. At dusk, she was once again under way.
Bermingham planned to steam along the western edge of the Sulu Archipelago and make his way to Java through Makasar Strait separating the east coast of Borneo and the west coast of Celebes Island, but reports received during the afternoon indicated that would be much too hazardous. That way he would have to pass the heavy concentration of enemy ships lying in Jolo Harbor. Several Japanese cruisers were known to be patrolling off the northeast coast of Borneo, and a minelaying submarine had been seen working at the entrance to Makasar Strait. Faced with no happy alternative, Bermingham was forced to take a longer route down the east coast of Celebes.
Near midnight, the Peary, with no lights showing, sliced at full speed through the Sulu Archipelago into the Celebes Sea via Pilas Strait, a mere 30 miles north of Jolo. By dawn of the twenty-eighth, the destroyer was well into the Celebes Sea, and all hands relaxed in the thought that, having eluded the Japanese at Jolo, their troubles lay behind them.
Hopes of an uneventful day at sea were shattered at 0810, when distraught lookouts reported an enemy, four-engine seaplane 8 miles off their port quarter and heading toward them. “Battle stations” sounded and seamen hustled to unlimber machine guns they knew were useless. Tensely, the crew waited. The big plane approached as though on a bombing run, but, at the last moment, turned away. Several times the plane seemed to be coming in on a bombing run and the Peary took evasive action. Still no bombs were dropped. At 1000 another four-engine seaplane joined up with the first, and for the next five hours the two of them kept up the pretense of making bombing runs. As long as this deadly game of cat and mouse went on, it was impossible for anyone in the Peary to relax; any one of the approaches might be the real thing. Bermingham drafted a dispatch reporting his position and the harassing of his ship by enemy bombers, but was unable to raise an Allied station to receive his message. The men of the Peary were somewhat reassured at 1400, when two PBY seaplanes were sighted flying about 5 miles to the west of them. At this time, the enemy planes were shadowing the destroyer some miles to the east. Although the PBYs remained in the area for almost an hour before flying off to the south, the destroyer’s efforts to exchange light signals with them were not successful.
After the PBYs had left, one of the Japanese bombers attacked the Peary from an altitude of 5,000 feet. She kept up continuous machine-gun fire, as Bermingham took evasive action, and the bombs exploded harmlessly 500 yards astern. When the second plane attacked from an even lower altitude, the Peary’s. 50-caliber machine guns seemed to be finding their mark, and the plane aborted the run.
At this point, two twin-engine torpedo planes joined the seaplanes. As though to divide attention on board the Peary, they circled ominously out of gun range while the seaplanes made two more bombing runs. Some bombs fell close, but none of them did any damage. Now the torpedo planes attacked. The first, flying 50 feet above the water, approached the Peary from her port bow. Immediately, the destroyer’s machine guns trained on this new threat. Bullets seemed to be getting closer to their mark, but the plane came to within 500 yards, launched two torpedoes, and zoomed out of range. Bermingham, with a wary eye on the second torpedo plane attacking from his port quarter, backed down full on the starboard engine, and these deadly tin fish sped harmlessly past his bow. But there was no respite. Two more torpedoes were on their way and, to avoid them, Bermingham had to swing his stern clear and stop.
Simultaneously, one of the seaplanes made a run from the stern of the Peary, which, lying dead in the water, appeared to be an easy victim. Just as the torpedoes missed, a scant 2 feet to starboard, Bermingham ordered all engines ahead flank speed. The engine room responded magnificently. The Peary’s propellers churned and, faster than anyone believed possible, she moved out from standstill to 15 knots. It was just enough. The seaplane’s bombs erupted harmlessly where only moments before the destroyer looked like a sitting duck. Having expended sixteen heavy bombs and four torpedoes, the enemy planes withdrew.
This was a trying nine-hour ordeal but morale in the Peary was exceptionally high. All she had to do now was steam under the protective cover of night, which was rapidly approaching, and in the morning, she would be in friendly territory.
The northern tip of Celebes Island was passed at 1745, and Bermingham tried to radio the shore station there to ask whether the waters leading into the Molucca Sea had been mined. He received no reply but, preferring to risk traversing a minefield to being subjected to more hell from the air, he continued on his way. Twenty minutes later, as dusk was descending, three twin-engine planes were seen approaching from the stern. Once again, his exhausted crew hurried to their battle stations, there to wait in grim silence. The lead plane, maneuvering to pass ahead, crossed the Peary’s course from starboard to port. Joy ran through the ship when it was determined from her markings that the plane was an Australian—a Lockheed Hudson bomber. The Anglo-Dutch-U.S. recognition challenge was flashed on the Peary’s signal searchlight, and the pilot appeared to wave. The destroyer men waved back. A few cheered.
Joy turned to dismay when one of the planes went into a glide-bombing approach from astern. Bermingham ordered the machine guns to hold their fire but, taking no chances, at flank speed he abruptly changed course to starboard. A bomb exploded 100 yards off the Peary’s port beam. During this evasive action, as the ship heeled to hard rudder, Seaman First Class Billy E. Green, stationed at one of the .50-caliber machine guns, lost his footing and fell overboard. A life jacket was thrown to him, and, when last seen, he was swimming toward Sunakeng Island a mile away.
The Lockheed Hudsons made two more bombing attacks, each time dropping a single 250-pound fragmentation bomb and machine-gunning the ship. All the bombs missed, but the last one exploded 10 yards off her port propeller guard, sending showers of shrapnel slamming into her. Seaman First Class K. E. Quinaux, manning a machine gun, was killed instantly. Chunks of shrapnel pierced the after engine room, and a steam line to the steering engine was ruptured, making it necessary to shift to hand steering. Shrapnel also split open three depth charges and set fire to a 4-inch shell in the ready racks aft. Before it could explode, Fireman Third Class G. A. Fryman courageously unstrapped the burning cartridge and threw it overboard.
It was dark when the bombers departed. The cruel attack left the men of the Peary dumbfounded. Again and again they had tried to signal the Australians that they were friendly, and certainly, it was agreed, they should have recognized the American flag flying from the mast. With one man lost overboard, another killed, and three wounded, the dispirited crew had every reason to be apprehsensive about what lay ahead.
Aside from the bomb damage, the Peary was in serious trouble. Her starboard engine’s Kingsbury thrust bearing was overheating, and she could maintain headway only with her port engine. Both fuel and feed water were in short supply. For these reasons, Bermingham headed for the small island of Maitara, near Ternate Island, in the Moluccas, where, according to his navigational information, there was an ideal harbor for hiding his ship while he made temporary repairs. He sent a message detailing the day’s attacks, the condition of his ship, and his immediate destination to commander, Task Force 5, and received an acknowledgement. Now that his ship’s whereabouts were known, Bermingham had every reason to believe that Allied aircraft would leave them alone.
With the captain steering from the after deckhouse, the crippled destroyer managed to reach the harbor at Maitara at dawn of the twenty-ninth and anchor close to shore, with bow and stern lines out to trees. As they had done before, the crew used palm fronds to camouflage the ship’s sides and superstructure.
That day and the next were spent in efforts to make the Peary seaworthy. In the interim, Bermingham took the ship’s motor launch and visited the Dutch military commander at Ternate, from whom he obtained a good supply of potable water, bread, and native fruits. No fuel oil was obtainable, but it was determined that the Peary would be able to reach the Dutch base at Ambon, 325 miles to the south, on the 19,000 gallons she had left, if she used them carefully.
At sunset on the thirtieth, the Peary shed her palm fronds and got under way for Ambon. It soon became apparent that, despite the temporary repairs, her starboard thrust bearing was overheating to an unacceptable degree, and Bermingham was forced to continue the passage on only the port engine. Without further incident, the Peary arrived in Ambon Bay in the early afternoon of 31 December 1941. With Japanese air and sea armadas pressing every closer to the Netherlands East Indies, men of the Peary, having suffered so many tragedies, found little of good cheer in this particular New Year’s Eve. Most of them were content to down a few warm Dutch beers and turn in for a peaceful night’s rest—the first in a long time.
While the destroyer was at Ambon, she got an explanation of the attack on her by Allied planes. It seems that Manado, on Celebes Island, had been heavily bombed by the Japanese a few days earlier, and it was believed this would soon be followed by a landing force. When the American PBY pilots saw the Peary making high speed in the general direction of Manado and apparently convoyed by Japanese four-engine bombers, they mistook her for an enemy light cruiser. This information, radioed to Ambon, brought the Australians to the attack.
The Peary was ordered to proceed to Darwin, Australia, and arrived there on 3 January 1942. Everything possible was done to put her in operating condition, but the overhaul facilities there being inadequate, no major work could be done. Because the Allies were desperately short of combatant ships, on 17 January the Peary was pressed into convoy duty, even though her meager armament could not be augmented.
On 18 February, she was ordered to accompany the heavy cruiser Houston to Java, where a last-ditch attempt would be made to forestall Japanese landings on that capital island of the Netherlands East Indies. The two ships cleared the minefields protecting Darwin Harbor at dusk and, as they did so, the Peary made sonar contact with an ememy submarine. The Houston steamed on out of the area, leaving the Peary to continue searching and, it was hoped, destroy the submarine. Several hours later, after dropping depth charges with undetermined results, the destroyer returned to Darwin to top off her fuel supply. This, she found, could not be done until the next morning.
When the sun’s sultry eye first leered through the haze at Darwin on the morning of 19 February 1942, to most people it was just the beginning of another hellishly humid day. This would be a hellish day all right, but a man-made one, which those who survived it would always recall with horror.
No one had the slightest inkling that Japanese land-based bombers had moved up to newly acquired bases within striking range of Darwin, or that the most powerful enemy strike force to be assembled since the attack on Pearl Harbor—two battleships, three heavy cruisers, and four aircraft carriers—had penetrated the Malay barrier and was in the Arafura Sea, a scant 200 miles away. An enemy attack on Darwin, at this time, was unthinkable. Its harbor was jammed with more than twenty merchant ships, an Australian hospital ship, several Australian corvettes, the seaplane tender William B. Preston, three PBY seaplanes of Patrol Wing 10, the Peary, and several lesser naval vessels. At 1030, the Peary completed refueling and Lieutenant Commander Bermingham was about to get under way for Java when, with the stunning suddenness of a lightning bolt, 188 carrier-based fighters and dive-bombers, in concert with 54 land-based bombers, struck Darwin.
The USS Peary (DD-226), sinking in Darwin Harbor, Australia, on 19 February 1942, a victim of Japanese bombers. Courtesy Royal Australian Navy Historical Section
In a matter of minutes the airfield was gutted, its few fighter planes shot down or destroyed on the ground. Barracks, warehouses, the town itself lay shattered and engulfed in flames. Ships in the harbor attempted to get under way to escape the planes swarming over them. Many did not escape. The British ammunition ships Neptuna and Zealandia, unloading at the docks, disintegrated amidst horrendous explosions. In short order, bombs and air-launched torpedoes sank the U.S. Army transports Mauna Loa and Meigs. A bombed-out Norwegian tanker, vomiting orange flames and dense black smoke, went down. The freighter Admiral Halstead, loaded with drums of high-octane gasoline, burst into a gigantic fireball and sank. Two Australian corvettes, shattered by bombs, went to the bottom. The William B. Preston was badly damaged, and the three PBYs were sunk at their moorings. When the enemy planes finally departed, thirteen ships lay on the bottom of Darwin Harbor and nine others were damaged. The number of casualties on land and afloat was staggering, and tons of supplies, desperately needed by the Allies, were demolished.
Immediately after the first bombs exploded, Bermingham had the Peary under way, zigzagging as best he could in a harbor cluttered with wildly maneuvering ships. It seemed as though every ship was under attack at the same time. The sweeping volleys of machine-gun fire that the Peary directed at enemy planes did little to stay the relentless onslaught. Shrapnel from innumerable near-misses gouged holes in the Peary’s hull and superstructure, while strafing planes raked her decks. All at once, the little destroyer shuddered from stem to stern as two bombs in rapid succession burst on her fantail. They demolished her depth-charge racks, sheared her propeller guards, and flooded her steering engine room. Moments later, incendiaries slammed into her galley creating an infernal fire. In the face of continuous attacks, the Peary’s crew sprang to the awesome jobs of extinguishing the flames, which threatened to consume the ship, repairing bomb damage, and attending to numerous casualties.
In a matter of minutes the galley fire was under control, but the nauseous breath of death and destruction shrouded the Peary. A bomb exploded in her forward magazine, and violent concussions from near-misses threatened to rip her apart at the seams. Next, an incendiary wrecked her engine room. She was all but done for but, somehow, the flaming, battered hulk kept fighting back. Finally, with her decks steeped in the blood of dead and wounded, the Peary, smashed by one bomb too many, broke up, and vanished beneath the waves.
Eighty officers and men, including Lieutenant Commander John M. Bermingham, her commanding officer, perished with the ship. One ship’s officer, Lieutenant W. J. Catlett, survived, only because he was ashore in the hospital at the time. Forty enlisted men, many of them wounded, miraculously escaped.
So ends the saga of the USS Peary (DD-226) and the magnificent Americans who manned her. Hopelessly outgunned, but always tenaciously fighting back, they exhibited a raw courage and steadfast devotion to duty that should constitute an inspirational chapter in our navy’s history. Yet, when the smoke of battle cleared, the little four-stack destroyer USS Peary, without so much as a “well done” for her heroic crew from the Navy Department, was summarily scratched from the lists, to be forgotten by all but a handful of survivors and the loved ones of those who died fighting for their country.