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Show ROBERT D. HAFFER PRIL 29 2002 making runs up and down The Slot. We'd exchange courses with Admiral in worth and the Salt Lake City, St. Louis Helena and Honolulu. One task force would go up in The Slot and the other one would go south, on the south side; the south side ofNew Georgia Guadalcanal, and so forth. But then we came back, and we decided, or someone decided, that there was a concentration of Japanese troops at Vila-Stanmore Plantation on Kolombangara. Now Kolombangara has a gulf in it called Kula Gulf, and I don't know that I've got a map here of it. But, anyhow, the idea was we were to go up and fire a bombardment in there onto these troops that supposedly had no idea where we were. Oh, here it is. Right here's a map and it shows-we were doing this at night. Going back to the Hornet, I had a friend aboard by the name of Dick Lanning, and he said, "Radar will win the war for us." And he was very accurate, because it did, because we had night vision, which the Japanese didn't have. Anyhow, this is going into the Kula Gulf. Kolombangara's here; New Georgia's here. But going in, the radar picked up two surface ships. And we started firing like mad, and all of a sudden they disappeared. So then we came around, and this was the bombardment course. We fired like mad and then exited. And then went backto Purvis Bay in the Florida Islands. But then, like I say, we started running regular patrols up The Slot-this would tell us here a little more-but Admiral Ainsworth's task force seemed to be unlucky because one night the Salt Lake City and the St. Louis both got torpedoed. When they came back in, there was a little New Zealand cruiser that joined called the Leander, which joined Admiral Ainsworth's task force. The next night they went up, the Leander got torpedoed. We had a poem here, if I can find it, my roommate had written called, "Here we go up The Slot, hope we don't get what 18 got. The Japs are hot up The Slot, hope we don't get what 18 got." Then we patrolled on 32 |
