Moored at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7th, 1941 the crew of the Ralph Talbot manned the destroyer’s guns to the wail of klaxons. They prepared to get underway within minutes of the start of the Japanese attack. She steamed past buoy No. 1 at 0934 having already splashed her first enemy aircraft - two planes she fired on were observed to crash and another careened away smoking. One plane screamed low over the bridge only to be perforated by the forward .50-caliber guns. Another that was attacking the Curtis was blown apart by the Ralph Talbot’s No. 3 gun. The crew watched grimly as they passed through black plumes of smoke billowing from the wreckages in the harbor.
The executive officer, a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1930, Lieutenant Roy Newton looked a bit older than his thirty-four years at times when sleep pulled under his eyes. His graduating class jested that he had gone to the Academy from Texas just to ‘see if the water was salty,’ and from the day of his acceptance focused exclusively on his studies, often completing work with just enough time to achieve a bit more. Within a week after the attack, he was sailing with the destroyer churning across the Pacific searching for enemy submarines with Task Force 14 on the first of a series of carrier force screening assignments.
In January in 1942, she sailed with Task Force 8 on a mission to raid Japanese positions in the Marshalls and Gilberts. Her crew braved harsh winds and high seas as they launched attacks against enemy strongholds. The fighting continued in February and March as they targeted Wake and Marcus Islands. By the 9th of March, they returned to Pearl Harbor with Task Force 16, only to join Task Force 15 on the 19th for more escort missions between Hawaii and the west coast throughout May. In early June, they escorted auxiliaries to the northwest of Hawaii, where they refueled and replenished the victorious forces of the Battle of Midway. Afterward, they escorted Task Force 16 back to Pearl Harbor and on the 14th set sail for Australia and New Zealand.
SAVO ISLAND
Between Tulagi and Guadalcanal, the Ralph Talbot faced ten enemy dive bombers during the invasion on August 7th, 1942. They came in over the clouds from the north and targeted destroyers on the screening line. The gunners were able to pick off one and speculated they hit a second. They resumed anti-submarine patrolling through the next day when a swarm of forty torpedo planes and eight bombers attacked the Task Force. Again, the gunners chased the aircraft, confirming a score of two.
The night of August 8th hung thick and oppressive over the waters near Guadalcanal. The U.S.S. George F. Eliot lay burning in the waters giving off the only light near the islands. The Ralph Talbot steamed quietly through the darkness patrolling the channel north of Savo Island. Alongside the fellow destroyer U.S.S. Blue, they acted as pickets against any approaching Japanese warships threatening the Allied invasion force. The two ships had been selected as the best destroyers in Squadron Four for their results with radar. Before sunset, they had head off past Savo – Blue to the west and the Talbot noth of the channel guarded by a group of cruisers.
As the humid night dragged on, a scout plane was spotted flying over Savo Island towards Tulagi. Assuming it was likely Japanese, Ralph Talbot's crew frantically radioed a warning: “Warning, warning. Plane over Savo Island heading east.” The message made it around with Talk Between Ships system, but the message failed to move up through command and reach all Allied ships in the area. Tensions mounted as the early hours of August 9th arrived.
General quarters sounded with the message: “All ships! Warning, warning. Three enemy ships inside Savo Island.” Moments later, a blinding searchlight cut the dim glow of the Eliot and swept over the Talbot, revealing her to enemy ships lying in wait. A second beam illuminated the Talbot followed by the terrifying splash of enemy shells landing perilously close. The Battle of Savo Island had begun.
Ralph Talbot's gunners snapped into action, exchanging fire with an unseen Japanese cruiser off the port quarter. Shells tore into the destroyer, killing ten men instantly and leaving two missing. The bridge was hit and radar and fire control disabled amidst raging fires. At 0217, Ralph Talbot was illuminated by a searchlight of a friendly ship who fired on her by mistake, resulting in two additional fatalities. Five minutes later, after rectifying the friendly fire error, she sighted a Japanese cruiser on her port quarter. Both ships flicked on search lights, but the Talbot’s were dead – the cables were cut from previous shelling. The Japanese cruiser had the advantage and shells slammed into the Talbot’s chart house, destroying radar equipment, and cut fire control circuits and ignited fires. Three more shells hit the wardroom, starboard quarter, and underside of gun number 4.
With communications cut and fire creeping up into the bridge, Newton ordered heavy weights jettisoned from the starboard side of the ship to resolve her 20-degree list and the Ralph Talbot crawled back towards the shore of Savo as the Japanese disappeared before dawn. After an hour of her crew fighting desperately to save their crippled ship, the fires and flooding were under control and they had already started repairs.
As dawn broke, the full toll became clear - twelve sailors lost, twenty-three wounded. The night's battle was a tactical victory for the Japanese, whose surface forces had caught the Allied navy off guard. The battle exhibited the limitations of radar around land masses and showed that the Japanese were recovering from their defeat at Wake Island.
VELLA GULF
After the moon set behind an overcast sky, frequent rain squalls stippled the calm sea in the midnight darkness while the U.S.S. Stack cruised off of Gizo and Kolombangara Islands searching for enemy supply barges. For the first time during the Pacific war, American destroyers were operating independently of the main cruiser force in an effort to engage four Japanese destroyers on a mission to reinforce their own troops on Kolombangara. The American destroyers Dunlap, Craven, Maury, (Division Able One) Lang, Sterett and Stack (Division Able Two) comprising Task Group 31.2 slinked toward Vella Gulf without detection to lay in wait for the Japanese forces they knew were coming.
After completing earlier searches along the coasts of Gizo and Kolombangara, the Stack’s skipper, Lieutenant Commander Roy Newton, felt it was fortunate they had not had to engage any targets as the gunfire may have given away their position. He had been commanding the Stack since February after the ship’s repair and overhaul. He took her through the familiar Solomons and New Georgia under constant threat of Japanese aircraft, finally engaging enemy ships in late July. It would be an engagement at Vella Gulf that earned a battle star for the destroyer and a decoration for Roy.
Just before midnight on August 7th, 1943, radar showed the enemy ships incoming and the three destroyers of Division Able One released twenty-four torpedoes and cut to the right to avoid retaliation. The Chief Torpedoman’s Mate of the Dunlap reported their shots to run hot, straight and true, leaving Division Able Two open to fire at will once hits were observed. A moment later, the enemy destroyers erupted first with four explosions and then several more that rocked them so much Commander Newton felt the battle was already won. Of the four enemy ships, one became engulfed in a plume of red flames and black smoke, indicating that her oil tanks had been struck, and a fire ripped over the surface of the ocean.
Roy felt the Stack was in good position to fire again on the destroyer that was blazing and he ordered his starboard torpedo battery to fire. Though the raging flames obscured the results, he believed they scored at least one hit on the vessel. The Japanese were decimated by the attack and delivered little against the American attack amidst their damage and confusion. Within ten minutes, one of the ships succumbed to damage and sank; a second slipped away fifteen minutes later at exactly midnight; the third was absent from radar and only the fourth vessel remained, still an inferno and remaining afloat even after a terrific explosion that rose six or seven hundred feet into the air.
The Stack was assigned to mop up the area with Division Able Two and were prepared to fire on the burning ship once more when the phantom third vessel moved in front of the blaze, silhouetted against the fires behind her. Immediately the three American destroyers fired torpedoes; an early salvo form the Sterett struck the ship’s magazine and the violent blow blew the ship open, pulling the stern under water within seconds. Only the fourth destroyer remained burning, but was quickly extinguished by another round of torpedoes from the Task Force and finally succumbed twenty-seven minutes after midnight.
For the next hour and a half, oil and debris continued to burn on the surface filling the air with the scent of burning oil, diesel and wood. The waters were filled with Japanese clinging to anything that would float and their bodies tumbled in the wake of the Stack as she steamed through looking for prisoners to capture. They could be heard yelling in unison something that sounded like “Kow-we, kow-we” and it was an eerie cry carried over the burning sea, broken only by the occasional cry of pain or terror. Despite the number of survivors in the water, it was impossible to pull any aboard due to the Stack’s speed and men evading capture and they escaped toward the dark islands surrounding the gulf.
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From his short tour commanding the Stack, Newton departed for Staff duty as Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer for visits to duty stations from San Diego to Miami, Key West, and Washington D.C. before returning to the West Coast in the new year. He spent much of 1944 and the first half of 1945 traveling around training facilities in Washington, Oregon and California observing, studying and training in anti-submarine operations. He finally took command of a vessel again in June 1945 when he joined the Hugh W. Hadley in the ‘Boneyard’ where she was recovering from an attack by three suicide planes. His duties were only to return the damaged ship home and they left Kerama Retto on July 5th for Buckner Bay off Okinawa for the 6800-mile voyage to the United States.
Under tow of one tug ATA-199, it became an exhibition of Newton’s seamanship when their convoy, enroute to Saipan, met violent seas and wind on the third day. Radio reports indicated they were facing a 65-knot typhoon. Despite a sharp diversion by the slow convoy, the Hadley was unable to avoid the fol weather completely and for twenty-four hours Newton battled against the elements. He nursed the ship which could suffer little more structural damage and was forced to part from the towline twice. At one point they were rolling as far as 57-degrees to port, but the tow line held and on August 7th they arrived at Saipan.
PALESTINE
In the aftermath of World War II, as much of the world teetered on the brink of further conflict, Newton’s first major assignment took him to the tinderbox of Palestine in August 1948. He was detached from Naval Academy duties to serve as an observer under Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations Mediator for Palestine, with an initial task to oversee the movement of a jeep convoy from Fayid, Egypt to the newly formed nation of Israel. This relatively straightforward mission, perhaps a bit unusual for a naval officer, was likely to be victim to the simmering tension in the region. Many convoys had been ambushed by Arabs in the previous months. The tension came to a peak a month after Newton’s arrival when Bernadotte was murdered.
From late August through the end of that fateful year, Newton assumed the role of Senior Observer for the Haifa Coasts and Ports. His responsibilities were manifold – registering all male immigrants of military age, scrutinizing incoming cargo for war materials, and maintaining a watchful eye over the coastline stretching from the Lebanese border to Natanya. He tour was exceedingly quick and after what could be measured in days and weeks, he departed the Middle East and soon after left to command Sangley Point in the Philippines.
KOREA
Commander Naval Forces, Far East was headquartered in Tokyo since its establishment in 1947. The staff administered all Naval forces consisting of one light cruiser and four destroyers assigned to Japan and the surrounding islands conquered during World War II. At the outbreak of the Korean War the number of Naval forces grew exponentially from the feeble force to over four hundred ships from multiple nations, but when Roy joined on July 2, 1950, his available force was still meagre.
Grueling work consumed twelve hours or more per day and Roy resorted to moving his cot into his office and sleeping in short spurts when it was possible. The landing of troops from Pusan to Pohang-Dong, invasion of Inchon, evacuation and siege of Wonsan, and continual patrols and bombardments along the Korean coasts covered his desk and stuffed files with an innumerable number of documents and his phone constantly rang. Operations during the period were among the most infamous of the Korean campaign and the more routine included shore bombardment, mine sweeping, blockades, and aerial warfare. Meetings of the great minds and commanders under MacArthur filled his time otherwise, sometimes to great results and other times to debate theories which they had no means of achieving on the Korean front. By the time Captain Newton’s time to rotate home came in June, he had completed his duties with zeal and professionalism worthy of recognition and decoration.
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After a two-year break from the combat theater, he returned to Korean waters to command the U.S.S. Piedmont in August 1953. Her tour from April to October 1954 marked the first year since the armistice. Despite the truce in effect, the seas were still laden with mines and enemy air and submarine attacks were suspected and anticipated. Attacks never materialized, however, and the Piedmont went about her tender services to ships of Canada, Colombia, New Zealand, South Korea and Thailand. Newton commanded the working ship to such a high level that her crew led all other tenders of the force in production efficiency and continued to do so month after month. He also arranged for a print shop to accommodate a new allowance of presses which Bureau of Ships adopted for all tenders of her class.
Messages of thanks and praise flowed through constantly. The Minister of National Defense for South Korea, Won Yil Sohn, decorated Roy with the Ulchi Order of Military Merit for his service in the defense and development of Korea in the post war period. The Koreans were most appreciative of Roy’s devotion to the Republic of Korea Navy in which he took time to cultivate and train the crews in many subjects they had not had much exposure to. The repair work was a departure from his career at sea in high adrenaline operations, but he took great pride in his crew and in sharing his knowledge. Regardless of the nature of the work, Roy was satisfied to be away from the desk for a time and back at home on the bridge.