The Radio Gunner

by Alexander Forbes

At a signal from the Delaware, all at once the broadsides of the entire battle-line went off; in record time the second salvo followed the first, and then the third; and, even before the enemy had responded and his first salvos had come screeching through the air, great fires and jets of steam and smoke told the story of heavy damage already done across the six miles of water.

There was now no more need for silence; the flagship would direct the movements of the fleet by radio, all transmitters would be in action; the radio compass had done its work. Evans left the radio-compass station and hastened to a hatch leading to the main radio room beneath the armored deck. As he crossed the superstructure he saw far away in the southwest the scene of wild tumult, ships on fire, the orange flashes of their salvos, the splashes and hits of the straddling salvos from the Allied fleet, and then the great splashes of the enemy’s salvos landing several hundred yards short, followed by the screech of their ricocheting shells overhead. Added to this, the deafening roar of the Delaware’s own broadside completed an indelible picture in his mind as he went below into the comparative quiet of the radio room, now becoming the busy scene of tactical dispatches coming and going, with Elkins directing the work of coding and decoding.

The scouts and destroyers of the decoying force had paid a fearful price in the climax of their torpedo attack. The seven surviving cruisers, all riddled with shells, some crippled with vital hits, their decks strewn with splinters and wreckage, but all still able to steam, withdrew out of range. Their work was done, and well done. Several destroyers were sunk, for they had come even closer to the enemy, and thus drawn the heavier fire. Those nearest to their sinking comrades turned, zigzagged, dodged a salvo or two, and then stopped while the shells still fell round them thick and fast, to rescue the survivors, the speed of the enemy battle fleet soon, happily, causing the range to increase just enough to render the rescue something short of downright suicide. Yet many men went down with their ships, thinking to the last, not of self, but only of the fight.

Barely had the attacking cruisers and destroyers on the port side of the Mediterranean column withdrawn, when no less than forty American destroyers appeared darting out from the haze on their starboard bow. With all available destroyers of the Mediterranean fleet busy repelling the first attack on the port side, and with all turret guns not yet crippled, firing wildly into the haze on the northeastern horizon, there was nothing left but the starboard secondary batteries of the battleships with which to repel this new and formidable onslaught. The morale of the gunners, already shaken by the startling turn of events, was no whit the better for the sight of the angry swarm of destroyers charging in with the speed of express trains. Their fire was hot but wild, and soon the sea fairly seethed with torpedo tracks which the battleships desperately maneuvered to dodge, thus dislocating the aim of their turrets.

The torpedo attack was chiefly concentrated on the leading ships and especially on the Mediterranean flagship, for well the Allies knew that morale was not the Turk’s long suit, and that a loss of centralized control would severely cripple his fleet. In spite of frantic efforts by the gunners of the secondary battery and vigilant watch for torpedo tracks from bridge and crow’s-nest, nothing the helmsman could do availed to dodge the concentrated swarm of torpedoes, and, in less than ten minutes from the landing of the first salvo, the Mediterranean flagship was hit in the starboard engine room.

The men on the American destroyers, now zigzagging off through a tornado of shell-fire, looked back through the leaping pillars of white, frothy water, and shouted as they saw the great battleship more than half-obscured by a strange patchwork of white steam and black smoke rising in clouds above her fighting tops. Then they saw her, with her engines crippled, listing heavily to starboard, fall out of line, and drop astern. The Turkish Admiral signaled a light cruiser to come alongside, and soon had transferred his flag to another battleship farther astern, swinging well out of line to port and thus taking refuge on the disengaged side of his line during the transfer.

Before his flagship was torpedoed, the Admiral had managed to send a signal to his advance battle cruiser force, ordering them to deploy to starboard and attack the Allied battle-line. The rear admiral in charge of this force, angry at his vain pursuit of the scout cruisers which had led him into the trap, turned his flagship at high speed and led his column impetuously to the attack. At nine thousand yards, in spite of the low visibility to the east, he sighted the American flagship leading the Allied column, and, swinging rapidly on to a parallel course, opened fire on her. The Delaware, having seen the enemy flagship hit by the torpedo and then fall out of line, was in the act of training her turrets on the next battleship astern when the enemy battle cruisers suddenly appeared closing rapidly on her port bow. She had barely time to train her turrets on the leading battle cruiser before the concentrated fire of three of these formidable opponents began to pour in upon her. And now came the great test for her manifold radio equipment. There was no time to lose. Signals must be sent to all battleships within range to support her by diverting their fire to these fast and powerful ships; signals must be sent to all available destroyers to harass them with torpedo attacks; and still the direction of the fleet as a unit must go on, and all without mutual interference of messages. Signals were flashing out simultaneously on different wave-lengths from three or four separate antennæ, both by radio telephone and by radio telegraph. The Delaware was now heavily engaged, delivering salvos from all her turrets at the maximum speed, and, in spite of zigzagging, frequently being straddled by the salvos of the battle cruisers. Down in the radio room officers were feverishly coding and decoding messages, some operators were sending them, others tending the control switches whereby the radio telephone was kept running so that the chief of staff in the conning tower could give orders verbally to those units which he was in the greatest hurry to reach. Evans was watching the various ammeters and indicators to see that the machinery ran smoothly, and Elkins was directing the whole show.

Suddenly Evans noticed the metres of the radio telephone outfit doing strange things. Down behind the battleship’s armor the general din of action was so confused that the burst of a shell on the superstructure had not been noticed as distinct from the rest. But to Evans the combination of symptoms in the metres told a story.

“The antenna or rat-tail of the ’phone set is broken,” he shouted to Elkins. “Tell Fraser. I’ll see if it can be fixed.” Then turning to the chief radio electrician and pointing to the generator involved, he called, “Shut off the juice and don’t turn it on till I tell you.” Then, seizing a spool of wire and a strong pair of wire-cutting pliers, he shot out of the room.

A hasty conversation then followed by voice-tube between Elkins and Captain Fraser in the conning tower, in which arrangement was made for the use of the next most expeditious channel of communication with the destroyer flotilla. Just then Fraser, looking out of the conning tower, saw a figure in dungarees climbing rapidly up the basket mast like a monkey, with a loose wire trailing from his belt. Evans, coming on deck, had found the rat-tail, cut away from the antenna by a shell fragment, sprawling on the deck. Seizing the broken end and securing it to his belt, he started up the ladder, swinging himself out on the framework where necessary to avoid leading the rat-tail foul of stays. As he crawled out at last, clinging like a bee to the chain of insulators that supported the antenna swaying in mid-air, and groping for the ends of the broken wires that had converged from the antenna to the rat-tail, his senses were fairly dazed by the roar and din of the battle now raging at its height. Shells screeched past him, shells hit on the decks, shaking the whole ship as they burst, great fountains of water rose where others fell short and filled the air with heavy spray. Smoke was pouring from a large, jagged hole in the deck; and as he clung there, swaying high in the air, he saw a large whaleboat smashed to matchwood by a shell, fragments of her timbers flung far into the sea. A fire brigade was running aft over the splintered deck, the men looking like ants from the great height whence he caught these fragmentary glimpses of the scene. Every fifteen seconds consciousness seemed suspended as the Delaware’s twelve sixteen-inch guns let go their salvos—flash, roar, and concussion fusing in one mighty shock that well-nigh stunned and paralyzed every faculty. Half-dazed he could only cling each time till the salvo was over, then renew his efforts to reach the swaying wires; and each time the spotters in the foretop close by, while waiting for the smoke to clear and the seconds to elapse before the salvo was due to reach its mark, looked round to see if he still was there. At last he reached the wires, and, clinging with both legs and one arm, managed to join together the broken ends by means of the spool of wire in his pocket. As he crawled back, he had a momentary glimpse of the enemy battle cruisers in the west, and could clearly distinguish from the flash of their gun-fire the red glow of the hits made by the Delaware’s salvos. The action, as he had seen it earlier when he was on his way to the radio room, was mild compared to what was going on now. The Delaware was being heavily pounded, but, supported by the three battleships next in line, she was scoring more hits on the enemy than she received, and with heavier shells. Just as he reached the basket mast, there was a concussion which almost shook him off. Looking aft he saw fragments of steel flying from the roof of one of the turrets. With a sinking feeling he realized that in that turret was Lindsay’s battle station. A moment later some of the turret crew came scrambling out of the hole the shell had torn. Then to his horror he saw a great burst of flame shoot from the turret and rise to the height of the mast.