Battle of Makassar Strait, 1942: Doorman's cruisers under the bombers

The Battle of Makassar Strait was not fought in the Makassar Strait, and no enemy ship took part. It was an air attack on an Allied cruiser force on its way there, and it showed how little a fleet without air cover could do against land based bombers in the waters of the Dutch East Indies.²

The race for the Indies

In January 1942 Japanese forces were working their way south through the oil rich islands of the Dutch East Indies. American, British, Dutch and Australian warships, combined under the ABDA command, tried to slow them. On the night of 24 January Dutch and American warships attacked a convoy off Balikpapan in Borneo, and the Allies hoped to repeat the success.³ › Battle of Tarakan, 1945

A first attempt, against a convoy at Kendari, came to nothing when the Japanese sailed early. Then a new convoy was reported at the southern entrance to the Makassar Strait, between Borneo and Celebes. Before dawn on 4 February the Dutch light cruisers De Ruyter, flying Doorman's flag, and Tromp left their anchorage north of Gili Raja Island with three Dutch destroyers, and at 5 a.m. met the U.S. heavy cruiser Houston, the light cruiser Marblehead and four American destroyers. The plan was a hit and run raid into the strait.⁴

Seen from the air

The Japanese already knew where they were, the Navy's Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships records. Returning bombers had spotted the force on 3 February as it tried to pass the Madura Strait, and on 4 February flying boats of the Toko air group found it again and shadowed it. On the strength of those reports, land attack planes of the Takao, Kanoya and First air groups took off. At 9:49 a.m. the Americans counted 36 bombers closing from the east.⁵

Marblehead

Marblehead dodged three attacks, and her gunners shot down one bomber. A fourth wave of seven planes then put two bombs into her and a third close aboard the port bow, which caused severe underwater damage. Fires swept the ship, she listed to starboard and began to settle by the bow, and with her rudder jammed she steamed in circles at full speed while her gunners kept firing and damage control parties fought the fires.⁶

By 11 a.m. the fires were under control. The ship had 15 dead or mortally wounded and 34 seriously injured. At 12:55 p.m. she turned south, steering by working her engines at different speeds, and reached Tjilatjap on the south coast of Java drawing 30 feet forward. The photograph above shows the bomb damage to her stern there.⁷

Houston

According to the same Navy history, the attacks on Houston came in waves 15 to 20 minutes apart for about two hours. Her gunnery officer later said only about one 5 inch shell in four was exploding. The first salvo straddled her, nine near misses throwing so much water aboard that loaders on the flight deck were washed about in a foot of it.⁸

The last attack put a bomb into her mainmast. It burst about three feet above the main deck beside Turret III, set off a powder charge and started a serious fire inside the turret. Gunner James E. Hogan flooded the shells, powder hoists and handling rooms by hand to keep the fire from the magazines, and Lieutenant (j.g.) Walter G. Winslow went into the burning turret with a hose. Admiral Thomas Hart, who visited the ship four days later, wrote in his diary that the loss of life was great, but that Houston would stay in service, minus one turret. She never got it back: when she was sunk about four weeks later she still had only two working 8 inch turrets.⁹

The Dutch cruisers De Ruyter and Tromp were only slightly damaged by near misses.¹⁰

The raid abandoned

With two of his four cruisers damaged and no air cover, Doorman called off the raid into the Makassar Strait. Houston went to Tjilatjap for repairs, where her dead were buried on 6 February. Marblehead could not be docked there; her worst leaks were patched and on 13 February she set out on a voyage of more than 9,000 miles, by way of Ceylon and South Africa, to reach a shipyard in the United States.¹¹

The Japanese invasion went on. Three weeks later Doorman led what was left of the ABDA fleet against the Java invasion convoy in the Battle of the Java Sea, with Houston firing from her two remaining turrets.¹² › Battle of the Java Sea, 1942