Robert D. Shaffer, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, April 29, 2002: Saving the Legacy tape no. 448 and 449

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ROBERT D. HAFFER PRIL 29, 2002 ROB: Okay. So we're south ofBougainville, and w v gotten ord r tog north and intercept this Japanese task force, which is coming down to shell the Marin sin Empress Augusta Bay. So we're going north and spot them on the radar and the Japanese have four cruisers and about eight destroyers, which is about what we had. We re in column with one destroyer division ahead, the cruisers are in column and a destroyer division behind. Admiral Merrill, who's the task force commander, directs the destroyers to establish a torpedo solution and then head and launch torpedoes. You know, destroyers in those days had torpedo tubes. They were Fletcher Class Destroyers, and I think carried four torpedoes. So the destroyers started and all of a sudden the Spence, which is in the after-destroyer division, is hit with a torpedo. But the cruisers open fire at about the same time as the torpedoes are supposed to hit. And we fire and fire and fire. Finally, it looks like the Japanese are gone. And I guess we'd been fighting for three or four hours, something like that. And we stopped firing for a while and I lighted a cigarette. And I've never tasted one that tasted any better. We'd gotten a shipment of Pall Mall cigarettes aboard the ship that were moldy. They were the only ones we had, and I'd kept a package in my shirt pocket. And in the South Pacific you're perspiring all the time, twenty-four hours a day. So if you think this cigarette tastes bad, you should smoke a mildewed Pall Mall soaked in sweat. It tasted good! BEC: (laughs) ROB: Anyhow, dawn came. We couldn't find any more Japanese ships around. It turns out that we had sunk the four cruisers, about six of the destroyers and two of them had fled. But the next morning, we were going back, heading south, to go back to refuel the destroyers, and we're attacked by air just off the southern end ofBougainville, 38