At 3am on January 24th 1942, four American destroyers launched a surprise raid on a Japanese
invasion fleet at Balikpapan, in Borneo.
For an hour they rampaged across an unsuspecting fleet of transports, winning the US Navy’s
first victory in the pacific war.
This is how they did it.
As the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet reeled from the attack on Pearl Harbour on
December 7th 1941, thousands of miles to the west the Asiatic Fleet was under immediate
threat.
Commanded by Admiral Thomas Hart, the Asiatic fleet was in theory one of the navy’s three
main formations, along with the Pacific and Atlantic fleets.
In reality, it was a small and outdated force, consisting of only the heavy cruiser Houston,
light cruisers Boise and Marblehead, 13 old Clemson-class destroyers, and 29 submarines.
Within days, as the Japanese invasion of the Philippines unfolded disastrously for the
US, it became clear that the fleet could not stay based out of Manila.
Admiral Hart was forced to move his ships south, to the dutch controlled port of Surabaya.
From there he was given the task of trying to prevent, or at least delay, the Japanese
invasion of the Netherlands East Indies, working together with British, Australian and Dutch
forces.
This was a daunting task, as heading straight for this part of the world was Vice Admiral
Ibo Takahashi’s Eastern Force, with the carrier Ryujo, 4 Myoko class heavy cruisers,
the light cruiser Naka, and 19 destroyers.
On top of this were powerful land based Japanese aircraft flotillas, which held growing air
superiority.
After assisting with the occupation of Mindanao in the phillippines, Vice Admiral Takahashi’s
ships proceeded south, landing troops at Jolo on December 25th, and Menado on January 11th.
The following day, a destroyer division under Rear Admiral Nishimura completed the capture
of Tarakan in north eastern Borneo, yielding the Japanese an important airbase and staging
area to push further south to Balikpapan.
Admiral Hart was keen to use his ships to prevent further Japanese advance despite being
outgunned, knowing that if the enemy got a hold of airbases at Balikpapan and Kendari
then their base at Surabaya would be in range of air attack.
On January 20th, Dutch intelligence reported a Japanese convoy moving south in the Makassar
strait.
Hart assembled a task force to sortie and confront this force, but was frustrated when
Marblehead developed engine trouble and Boise ran into a coral reef, gouging a massive hole
in its side and forcing the withdrawal of the cruiser to India for repairs.
This was a huge blow to the American naval presence, since Boise had been the only ship
in Hart’s force equipped with radar: somethincxg which would be sorely missed at the disastrous
battle of the java sea in late February 1942.
As two destroyers were detached to escort the cruisers away, this left just four destroyers
in the American striking force heading northwards.
On January 22nd reports came in from a Catalina reconnaissance aircraft and from the submarine
USS Pike, of large numbers of Japanese transports and escort vessels heading for Balikpapan.
Despite knowing they’d probably be heavily outnumbered, Admiral Hart was determined that
the four destroyers, under Commander Paul Talbot, should take the opportunity to engage
the invasion flotillas.
At 12:05pm on January 23rd, Hart signalled Talbot: “ATTACK ENEMY OFF BALIKPAPAN”.
Talbot was informed that his four ships could be facing 2 cruisers and at least 8 destroyers-
a huge mismatch.
To even the odds, he would count on a high speed attack made at night with the element
of surprise.
Through the afternoon he kept his ships heading north-east, drifting towards the coastline
of celebes, in the hopes of deceiving any Japanese aircraft as to his true destination.
As it was, no hostile planes appeared, and at 7.30pm, safely under the cover of darkness,
he swung the destroyers around and headed in a straight line at top speed for Balikpapan.
As they steamed across the strait, Commander Talbot signalled his ships to order them to
avoid firing their guns initially so as not to give their position away, and only open
fire once all torpedoes had been expended.
He urged his ships to “use own discretion in attacking independently when targets located…use
initiative and determination”.
By midnight, the flotilla was approaching the coast, and the western sky began to glow
orange- lit by oil wells set ablaze by the dutch defenders in the face of Japanese landings.
The American destroyers could also see a fire that was much closer, to their north.
This was the transport Nana Maru, which had been struck by bombs from a Dutch air raid
some hours before and been abandoned while still afloat.
A Dutch submarine was also operating in the area that night, and at 12.45am it managed
to torpedo and damage the Transport Tsuruga Maru, closer to the shoreline.
This attack triggered a huge response from the Japanese escorts under Rear Admiral Shoji
Nishimura aboard the light cruiser Naka, who ordered his eleven destroyers to join in the
hunt for the submarine to the south.
Nishimura had no idea that by doing so he was clearing the way for Talbot’s incoming
destroyers, which made visual contact with some of Nishimura’s ships just after 2.30am.
In the darkness, the Japanese ships initially thought they had encountered some of their
own, and the last ship in the line signalled the US flagship, John D. Ford to inquire as
to their identity.
Commander Talbot ignored this and kept on his course, and the enemy destroyers soon
faded away into the night without turning to investigate the unknown vessels.
A few minutes later, at 2.45am, the Japanese transports began to come into view.
They were arranged in two neat lines, stationary, and silhouetted against the fires raging ashore.
It was the perfect setup for torpedo attacks.
USS Parrott, the third ship in the line was the first to engage, launching three torpedoes
from its port side at an anchored ship.
Its crew counted down the time until impact, but were rewarded only with silence.
They tried again, this time spotting the Japanese minesweeper W-15 to their starboard side and
firing five torpedoes, but again, no hits.
It was the same story for the others: the John D. Ford and Paul Jones both engaged hostiles
and neither scored a hit.
The destroyer crews had heard that their submariner colleagues had been struggling with defective
torpedoes, but had hoped the same flaws did not apply to their own.
They were to be disappointed.
By now it was 3am, and the American ships had passed by the line of transports.
Commander Talbot ordered a sharp turn to starboard, to swing his force around for a second attack
run.
Just as it was turning, Parrott loosed three torpedoes at another transport, the Sumanura
Maru.
This time, there was a large explosion, that cheered the destroyer crews and alerted the
Japanese to their presence.
W-15 signalled Rear Admiral Nishimura to report the explosion and sightings of potentially
hostile destroyers, but Nishimura did not believe that enemy ships could have entered
the anchorage undetected, and continued to believe he was only dealing with an allied
submarine.
By now, Talbot’s ships had completed their turn to the south, and were ready to engage
the transports again.
They were in a strong position, right in the middle of the Japanese ships, meaning that
their opponents could not safely engage them for fear of hitting friendly ships in the
darkness.
The ammunition ship Tatsukami Maru was the first in the firing line, targeted from 3.06am
by Pope, Parrott and Paul Jones, resulting in one hit and an enormous explosion.
The destroyers swept southwards as torpedoes were reloaded, and Talbot then decided to
force the issue.
At 3.14am he swung the ships to starboard, pressing closer to the Japanese ships.
Five minutes later, Pope and Parrott spotted the patrol boat PB-37 to their south.
5 torpedoes were fired in quick succession- 3 were hits, and PB-37 sank quickly.
Ahead of them, the John D. Ford loosed a torpedo at the freighter Kuretake Maru, but the Japanese
ship had managed to get underway and was able to avoid it.
Talbot was undeterred, looping around to the south to line up a shot at the Kuretake from
Ford’s port tubes.
But before they could fire another torpedo, Paul Jones did so and scored a devastating
hit.
After these engagements, Paul Jones joined Parrott and Pope in having used up all of
their torpedoes.
Talbot ordered them to open up with their guns as the line pushed north again, and targets
to the west were peppered with shells as they passed by.
At 3.35am, the John D. Ford again turned to the west, heading straight for the line of
transports closest to the shoreline.
But unwittingly, Talbot’s line was now on a collision course with the burnt out hulk
of the Nana Maru.
The fire on this ship had reduced enough to make it almost invisible until the last second.
Ford’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Jacob Cooper swung his ship hard to port to avoid
a collision, cutting speed as he did so.
The USS Pope did the same, but was surprised by the Ford’s sudden drop in speed and was
forced to turn even harder to the west, to go around its now near-stationary leader.
Parrott and Paul Jones turned the other way, hauling around to starboard.
Now out of contact with Ford and Pope, these two ships could not resume firing for fear
of hitting their own side, so they continued the turn until they were heading south, and
disengaged from the fight.
The USS Pope did the same, looping around to follow the others south.
The USS John D. Ford, and Commander Talbot, were not finished though.
Still with some torpedoes to fire, the destroyer got going again, pressing west towards the
inner line of transports.
At 3.46am it loosed three torpedoes on its port side at the Tsuruga Maru, a ship that
had earlier been damaged by the dutch submarine.
One hit was scored and Tsuruga Maru was finished off.
With its torpedoes now expended, Ford turned the attention of its guns to the Asahi Maru
to its north, only to find out to its surprise that this particular transport could fire
back.
At 3.47 Asahi Maru scored a hit on the American destroyer, starting a fire that was quickly
suppressed.
Ford retaliated with a hail of gunfire as it steamed by, wounding 50 sailors onboard
the Japanese ship.
Next in the firing line was Tamagawa Maru, which was equally battered.
Commander Talbot could now see the shoreline rapidly approaching, and judged it might be
time to turn around.
He swung Ford around to port, charting a course back through the lines of Japanese ships and
out towards where his other destroyers had gone.
Talbot asked for maximum speed, with the Ford – a more than 20 year old destroyer don’t
forget – reaching 32kts as it hared its way back to the south east.
The American commander was concerned about the Japanese escort ships catching up to him,
but he need not have worried.
Rear Admiral Nishimura was still off to the south west, hunting for a dutch submarine
that had long since dived to the seabed to wait out the action.
The Americans got clean away.
In just over an hour of carnage, the four destroyers had sunk 4 out of the 13 Japanese
transports present at Balikpapan for the cost of only a few sailors wounded.
It was an embarrassing poke in the eye for the Japanese, and the first victory for the
US Navy in the war against Japan.
In some ways though it was disappointing – only four sinkings when the American ships had
encountered no meaningful resistance was poor- resulting from ships occasionally targeting
the same transports as each other and thus wasting torpedoes, and from the faulty torpedoes
themselves failing to explode.
This was an issue affecting mark 14 torpedoes across the navy, severely impacting the effectiveness
of US submarines for the first two years of the pacific war.
In the short term, it meant that the Japanese advance was only delayed for a day or two
due to the events at Balikpapan, and it quickly resumed.
The Allied naval forces in the east indies would continue to resist valiantly but against
impossible odds, culminating in the Battle of the Java Sea, and the destruction of the
allied presence in south east asia.