By William Bell I remember the most amazing thing I ever saw.
It was sometime around the early summer of 1967 and somewhere in the South China Sea. I was on the fantail of a 2200 ton destroyer, the USS Samuel N. Moore (DD-747). It was a pleasure to be topside after standing the 12 - 4 watch in the engine room. Having knocked off ship's work for the day, a bunch of us lollygagged about the deck.
The Moore was steaming in company with another destroyer, the USS Collett (DD-730). She was a couple hundred yards off our starboard bow. Further off our starboard beam, about a mile away, we could see a thin strip of sandy beach beyond which rose the verdant, jungle draped mountains of North Vietnam.
The first inkling we had that it would be no ordinary evening was when we saw splashes in the water. Three artillery shells smacked down about halfway between the two ships.
Splash is hardly the word for it. The shells struck with such vehemence that they spawned veritable geysers. It is not an exaggeration say the splashes rose higher the the mast top.
In half a heartbeat, the ships swung into action. The Collett put her rudder over hard a-starboard and rang up full speed. The Moore responded similarly with the exception that she went hard a-port.
We all dashed for our battle stations, but the engineers ran into a bottleneck. The engine room hatch was battened down, and the only access was a single scuttle about the size of a porthole. Everybody was shouting, "Move it! Move it!", but it's simply impossible for a dozen men to squeeze through an opening that small in anything approaching a hurry. Worse, I was last in line.
It was one of those situations where time appeared dilated. Things that happened in split seconds seemed to take forever, and a lot of things were happening all at once.
The mounts had trained about, and all six of Slammin' Sammy's 5"/38s were barking as fast as the gun crews could load them. The roar was deafening to the point of causing physical pain. We felt the concussions from the muzzle blasts throughout our bodies. The deck shuddered from the recoil. The air was a haze of spent powder.
Meanwhile, the ship was heeling over 15 degrees or more from the torque of a tight turn. She was also lurching side to side as the main engines poured 30,000 horsepower into the propeller shafts. The screws bit hard into the brine, applying Newton's Third Law to good purpose. It's a wonder that mere steel and bronze can withstand such forces.
Eventually, I got my turn through the scuttle. As I dropped down into the engine room, I caught one last, fleeting glimpse of Collett just as a three shell salvo landed athwart her bow. Collett plowed directly through the center geyser making 25 knots. The water broke upon her superstructure with near explosive intensity. That's when I saw it, the most astounding thing I have ever witnessed.
For a tenth of a second, if that long, the spray caught the sunlight, and I saw Collett enshrouded in a dazzling rainbow. It formed a perfect circle with the ship in the center, her guns ablaze. In a twinkling, that image was indelibly seared onto the retina of my mind's eye.
I slammed shut the scuttle cover behind me and wondered why God chose that particular moment to display His handiwork.
I suppose Collett and Moore won the engagement. Leastwise, the enemy battery fell silent. We turned our bows east to the open sea. The bos'n's mate piped, "Secure from General Quarters ..."
William C. Bell
(former MM2 USN)
Metairie, LA
copacetica@bellsouth.net
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