U.S.S. Houston
Four U.S.
Navy ships have carried the name Houston, but only one captures the spotlight
and deservedly so. During the few weeks
after Pearl Harbor, the heavy cruiser U.S.S.
Houston bore the brunt of U.S. naval
efforts in the South Pacific. With no
air support, the Houston took on a vast Japanese armada and heroically went down
swinging.
The 1,100 man
cruiser was commissioned on June 17, 1930 and spent her years before the war with
the U.S. Pacific Fleet. She visited her
namesake city only once before the war. In
February, 1942, the Houston joined a combined Allied fleet based on the Java coast at
Surabaya. Things were not going well for the Allies;
Singapore had fallen to the Japanese and an invasion of the Dutch East Indies
was underway. In a stunning display of
naval air power, Japanese bombers sank the British battleships H.M.S. Repulse and H.M.S. Prince of Wales. The way was open for
Japan to conquer all of the South Pacific.
The only obstacle was a tiny fleet of Australian, British, Dutch and
U.S. warships.
Under the
command of Dutch Rear Admiral Karl Doorman, the Allied fleet set out to engage
a Japanese convoy invading Java. Instead
of one convoy, they encountered two covered by a naval force of three cruisers
and fourteen destroyers. Japanese
warships were armed with the superior "Long Lance" or Type 93 torpedoes
which they used with great success. At
the Battle of Java Sea, on February 27, 1942, the Allied fleet was reduced to
just two cruisers, the Australian H.M.A.S.
Perth and the Houston. Doorman was killed when his flagship, the DeRuyter, was blown to bits by a
torpedo. So many reports emerged that
the Houston was sunk that she was nicknamed
"The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast."
The next day,
the Perth and Houston steamed to Tanjung Priok near Jakarta. There they received orders to steam west through
the Sunda Strait, take on the Japanese invasion fleet, and escape into the
Indian Ocean. Through lack of
intelligence, the two cruisers didn't know the Japanese had sealed off the
strait; the Houston and Perth were heading toward their
doom. At midnight, they encountered a
fleet of Japanese transports landing troops near Batavia. A point blank exchange
of naval gun fire ensued in which two of the transports and a minesweeper were
sunk. On board one of the sinking
transports was the commander of the Japanese invasion force, Lt. General Hitoshi
Imamura. He was forced to jump overboard
and swim ashore. Japanese cruisers and
destroyers closed in on the Allied cruisers and sank both of them with
torpedoes and shellfire. The Houston's skipper, Captain Albert Rooks,
was killed along with 693 crewmembers.
Commander Walter Winslow of the Houston
recalled, "It seemed as though a sudden breeze picked up the Stars and
Stripes and waved them in one last defiant gesture." Captain Rooks was posthumously awarded the
Medal of Honor.
The survivors
were picked up by the Japanese and sent to prison camps in Southeast Asia. Not until after the war would all the details
of the Houston's sinking and the fate
of her crew be learned. Only 291 survivors
would make it back to the U.S. after the war.
Many of them had been forced to help build the "Death Railway"
made infamous in the movie, "The Bridge on the River Kwai." Actor William Holden played a survivor from
the Houston.
What happened three months latter was a
massive, Texas size response to the Houston's
sinking. In an inspired recruiting drive, navy recruiting officer Clarence C. Taylor
attempted to recruit 1,000 men from the City of Houston to replace the lost
crew of the Houston. The response was electric. Under the motto "Avenge the
Houston," thousands jammed the streets of downtown Houston to watch the
swearing-in of 1,400 men into the ranks of the U.S. Navy.
Seventy two
years later, in August, 2014, U.S. and Indonesian Navy divers discovered the
wreck of the Houston in the Sea of
Java. As a gravesite for the Houston's
crew, it has been respectfully placed off limits to any salvage or recreational
diving.
Check out
James D. Hornfischer's fine book, "Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the U.S.S.
Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of her
Survivors."
