Battle of the Java Sea

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of the Java Sea was fought on the 27th of February 1942. For a few hours that afternoon, Japanese commander Rear-Admiral Takeo Takagi believed his enemy had lost its nerve. Captain Tameichi Hara later recalled the words Takagi used, spoken as the Allied fleet seemed to turn away from Surabaya. "The enemy ships were staying clear of our air raids on Surabaya, the enemy is in no shape to fight us," Takagi said. He was wrong. Within hours the fleet he had dismissed turned around to attack, led by a Dutch admiral many of his own allies could barely understand. By the next morning, most of that fleet would be gone, scattered across the floor of the Java Sea. What turned a hesitant, mismatched collection of four navies into a force willing to charge a stronger enemy twice in one day? And how did that gamble end for the men who sailed into it?

• 2. A Scratch Fleet

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  Four navies made up the force meant to stop Japan's advance through the Dutch East Indies. Dutch, American, British, and Australian ships served together under the American admiral Thomas C. Hart of ABDAFLOAT. Many of the vessels dated back to the First World War, and the crews had never trained together or shared a common naval doctrine.

  Japanese troops had already raced from their colony in the Palau Islands, through captured bases in Sarawak and the southern Philippines. From there they pushed into eastern Borneo and northern Celebes, screening their troop convoys with destroyers, cruisers, and land-based fighters. On the 23rd and the 24th of January 1942, four American destroyers attacked a Japanese invasion convoy anchored off Balikpapan, Borneo, in the Makassar Strait. Between the 13th and the 16th of February, Japanese paratroopers fought Allied defenders around the Pladjoe oil plants at Palembang in eastern Sumatra. Those plants were the largest and most valuable petrochemical installations in the East Indies. On the night of the 19th to the 20th of February, an Allied force struck the Japanese eastern invasion fleet off Bali. That clash became known as the Battle of Badung Strait. That same day, Japanese carrier planes and land-based bombers raided Darwin on the Australian mainland twice. The raids left Darwin useless as a supply and naval base for the rest of the campaign.

  Doorman's own strike force numbered two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and nine destroyers, drawn from four different navies. The Dutch-speaking Doorman and his English-speaking captains from the United States, Britain, and Australia struggled to communicate once battle began. The Japanese heavy cruisers Haguro and Nachi each carried ten 8-inch guns and were reckoned to have superb torpedoes. Exeter, by comparison, had only six 8-inch guns. Houston fought with just six of her nine, after an earlier air attack had knocked out her aft turret.

  None of that showed yet on the morning of the 27th of February 1942. Doorman's ships slipped out of Surabaya harbor that day to hunt a convoy most of them had never seen.

• 3. The Afternoon Duel

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  At 15:48 on the 27th of February 1942, Amatsukaze's chief spotter, Shigeru Iwata, located Doorman's fleet at a range of 31,600 yards. Captain Tameichi Hara watched through his own binoculars and recognized De Ruyter's masts as the fleet came into view. Doorman briefly feared he faced battleships, a mistaken report that was quickly corrected. Only Exeter among the Allied ships carried radar, leaving the rest reliant on optics inferior to the Japanese. Doorman ordered his ships to turn west, hoping to cross the head of the Japanese line before it could cross his.

  By 16:00, lookouts on HMS Electra spotted the light cruiser Jintsu leading four destroyers at 16,000 yards. Her 4.7-inch guns fired the battle's first shots, quickly joined by every other Allied cruiser and destroyer. Every gun aimed at Jintsu straddled her repeatedly, yet not a single shell landed. Frustrated at that range, Rear-Admiral Shoji Nishimura ordered his destroyers to fire torpedoes at 15,000 yards, launching 43 in total. Nearly all of them missed, a waste of ammunition later criticized by the Japanese admiralty. Rear-Admiral Takeo Takagi, watching his heavy cruisers fire from long range with little effect, ordered every ship to close the distance.

  Haguro and Nachi then scored the first real hits of the day, on the two Allied flagships. An 8-inch shell from Haguro tore into De Ruyter's auxiliary motor room, starting a fire that killed one crewman and injured six others. Nachi's gunners hit Houston with two 8-inch shells, one through her bow and one through her stern, rupturing an oil tank. Some of Nachi's near misses landed as little as 3 yards from Houston's hull.

  A line of Japanese destroyers led by Jintsu closed to torpedo range while Electra switched her fire onto the column. One of Electra's shells hit the destroyer Tokitsukaze, throwing up thick white smoke that blinded Amatsukaze behind her. A near miss from De Ruyter lightly damaged Amatsukaze's hull and threw water across her bridge. Between them, the two destroyer lines fired 70 torpedoes that afternoon, and not one of them hit its target.

  Haguro then shifted her fire from De Ruyter onto Exeter, opening up at a range of 22,000 yards. Exeter's own gunnery was poor, managing only a straddle by her eighth salvo. Haguro's first hit struck Exeter's stern below the waterline, lifting the ship and flooding her hull. A second Haguro salvo tore into Exeter's engine spaces, destroying six of her eight boilers and killing 40 men. Exeter's speed collapsed to 5 knots, and as she fell out of formation, Houston, Perth, and Java all mistakenly followed her.

  Fifteen minutes after Haguro fired it, one torpedo launched from that same 22,000-yard range finally struck the Dutch destroyer Kortenaer. Kortenaer broke apart within moments and sank, taking 66 men down with her. It was probably the longest-range torpedo hit ever recorded in naval history. Nearby, the destroyer Asagumo fought Electra at point-blank range, taking hits that briefly left her dead in the water and killed five of her sailors. Asagumo's own gunfire, though, tore out Electra's turrets, engine room, and power, and set her ablaze until her crew abandoned her to sink.

  As dusk fell, Doorman's remaining ships turned away and vanished behind a smokescreen, but the fighting was far from over.

• 4. Night Of The Torpedoes

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  Doorman ordered his battered force to retire toward Surabaya after nearly two hours of fighting. The crippled Exeter went into port under escort from the destroyer Witte de With. After nightfall, Doorman reversed course again and steamed his remaining ships back toward the convoy. At around 21:15, the four American destroyers detached from the force, dangerously low on fuel and completely out of torpedoes. At about 21:25, while running west along the Java coast, the destroyer Jupiter struck a mine and sank, killing 84 men. That mine is generally believed to have been Dutch, laid earlier by the minelayer Gouden Leeuw. Around 22:00, HMS Encounter, Doorman's last destroyer, pulled 113 survivors of the sunken Kortenaer from the water before retiring to Surabaya. Doorman now had no destroyers left, only the heavy cruiser Houston and the light cruisers De Ruyter, Java, and Perth.

  Unknown to Doorman, one of Haguro's floatplanes had been tracking his force the entire time. Admiral Takagi believed he had already won and was reorganizing his ships when that same floatplane spotted Doorman turning back toward the convoy. Haguro and Nachi immediately raced to intercept, closing to 16,000 yards just before midnight. Low on ammunition for their main guns, both cruisers instead loosed a stealthy torpedo salvo: Nachi fired eight, Haguro four.

  At 23:32, the Allied fleet detected Nachi's torpedoes and turned to evade. The light cruiser Java, at the rear of the line, turned too slowly. A torpedo struck near her stern and ignited her magazine, blowing roughly 100 feet off her stern in the explosion. She sank within about 15 minutes, and only 19 of her crew survived.

  Four minutes later, one of Haguro's torpedoes struck Admiral Doorman's flagship, De Ruyter. The blast killed much of her damage-control crew and knocked out all power, so the fires it started could not be contained. Flooding and fire spread for roughly three hours until De Ruyter capsized and sank, killing 367 men. Among the dead were Admiral Doorman himself and Captain Eugene Lacomble.

  Shouts of "Banzai" rang out across Haguro's and Nachi's decks as their crews celebrated. Houston and Perth, now without an admiral, turned away from the fight.

• 5. Two More Battles

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  Perth and Houston reached Tanjung Priok on the 28th of February with orders to slip through the Sunda Strait to Tjilatjap. Neither ship could fully rearm or refuel before departing at 19:00 that evening. By chance, they ran straight into the main Japanese invasion fleet for West Java, anchored in Bantam Bay. Initial torpedo spreads fired by the destroyers Fubuki, Shirayuki, Hatsuyuki, and Asakaze all missed. Perth answered by hitting Shirayuki's bridge with a 6-inch shell. The arrival of the heavy cruisers Mogami and Mikuma, the light cruiser Natori, and three more destroyers quickly turned the battle.

  Mogami and Mikuma battered Houston with 30 shell hits and two torpedoes, crippling her. Houston's own 8-inch shells briefly knocked out Mikuma's electrical power in return. Perth, meanwhile, dueled the destroyer Harukaze, damaging her with three shells that failed to explode. Harukaze still managed to hit Perth with a torpedo that destroyed her forward engine room. Two more torpedoes, one from Shirakumo and two from Murakumo, flooded her bow and finished her off. Perth's crew abandoned ship, and she sank within about 20 minutes. The destroyer Shikinami then hit the already crippled Houston with a final torpedo, and her crew was ordered to abandon her.

  A spread of Mogami's torpedoes that missed the Allied cruisers went on to sink four Japanese vessels by accident. Those included the minesweeper W-2, the transports Sakura Maru and Tatsuno Maru, the depot ship Shinshu Maru, and the hospital ship Horai Maru. Tatsuno Maru and Shinshu Maru were later raised and repaired.

  The Dutch destroyer HNLMS Evertsen had been due to leave Tanjung Priok with Perth and Houston but was delayed by about two hours. Her captain saw the gunfire of the main action ahead and managed to steer clear of the Japanese main force. Murakumo and Shirakumo caught her in the strait anyway, hitting her with at least seven 5-inch shells. On fire and sinking, Evertsen ran herself aground on a reef near Sebuku Island. Her surviving crew abandoned ship just as her aft magazine exploded and she went down.

  The still-crippled Exeter, escorted by Encounter and Pope, was nearing Ceylon when Japanese cruisers found her. The heavy cruisers Myoko and Ashigara located her at 10:00 on the 1st of March. A two-hour gun battle followed with no hits scored on either side. Just before noon, Haguro and Nachi arrived, and an 8-inch shell finally destroyed what remained of Exeter's boilers. Her crew scuttled her soon after. Kawakaze and Yamakaze then wrecked Encounter's steering gear, and Myoko and Ashigara sank her with concentrated gunfire. Pope briefly escaped the guns, only to be crippled by aircraft from the carrier Ryujo and finished off by Myoko and Ashigara.

  With Exeter, Encounter, and Pope gone, nothing remained afloat from the force Doorman had led out of Surabaya four days earlier.

• 6. The Reckoning

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  Some 50 Dutch ships still anchored at Surabaya were deliberately scuttled to keep them out of Japanese hands, among them the already-damaged destroyer Witte de With. The Japanese later raised and repaired many of the hulls, but the scuttling still ended the Dutch navy's combat role for the rest of the war. A few surviving Dutch submarines kept operating alongside the US Navy and Royal Navy. A handful of Dutch destroyers, flotilla leaders, and gunboats went on serving with the Royal Navy.

  Japanese troops landed on Java on the 28th of February, the day after the main battle. Dutch troops, reinforced by British remnants, fought fiercely for about a week before ABDA forces surrendered on the 9th of March. During that final week, Japanese forces executed a number of Allied prisoners of war and Indonesians suspected of sympathizing with them.

  By conquering the Dutch East Indies, Japan took control of the fourth-largest oil-producing region in the world as of 1940. The Dutch would never fully regain control of Java, a key food-producing region for the wider colony.

  Between the 1st and the 4th of March, the heavy cruisers Takao, Atago, and Maya hunted fleeing Allied ships alongside the destroyers Nowaki and Arashi. Japanese sources called the sweep the battle of Tjilatjap, and it claimed 16 ships sunk or captured. Among the dead were the crew of USS Pillsbury, sunk with all hands, along with HMS Stronghold, USS Asheville, and the sloop HMAS Yarra.

  Of the eight major Allied warships lost across the two Java Sea battles, not one would be seen again for six decades.

• 7. Ghosts On The Seabed

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  As of 2002, only one of those eight wrecks, HMS Jupiter, had been located and plotted on an Admiralty chart. She lay in such shallow water close to shore that she had already been heavily salvaged.

  In December 2002, a wreck-diving team aboard the vessel MV Empress found HNLMS Java and HNLMS De Ruyter on the seabed. The same team went on to locate HMS Electra in August 2003 and HNLMS Kortenaer in August 2004. They found both HMS Exeter and HMS Encounter together in February 2007. Every wreck the team examined was described as remarkably well preserved, aside from the damage of battle.

  In late 2008, Empress located the eighth and final wreck, USS Pope, though illegal salvage divers had already stripped much of her away. The team kept the coordinates of their discoveries secret. By 2017, illegal commercial salvage operations had reduced all eight wrecks to scattered remnants or removed them from the seabed entirely.

  Whatever those operations left behind by 2017 is now the only physical trace of these ships. It rests, scattered, on the floor of the Java Sea where they went down.