(This page to be sent to Bureau of Navigation monthly with Log sheets)
UNITED STATES SHIP WALKER (DD-163) Tuesday, Sept. 2, 1943 00-04 As before. No problems to report. Woke up pumping detail and inspection party so they could begin final preparations.
Sonny Campeti, Lt. Cmdr. USN
04-08 As before. Pump boilers at full steam pressure despite leaks. Detail reports all in readiness. Inspection party discovered and repaired a faulty joint in the #4 main pipe. Split ends were the cause-like we have seen before. Inspection parties will continue to observe all joints throughout the operation.
Bernard L. Sandison, Lt. Cmdr, USNR
08-12 As before. Weather clear. Water smooth on the bay. Slight easterly wind. Conditions optimum. 0800 mustered all hands and fed them at their stations. No absentees. Final visual inspection of all lines and seals. Heard reports from divisions. Lemurian Homes Humfra-Dar and Woor-Naa standing by to assist with ship-board pumps. Engaged primary pumps 0920. Observed first streams of water being expelled from dry dock basin. Engaged in brief verbal celebration.
Brad McFarlane, Cmdr, USN
12-16 Not as before. 1350 observed slight reduction of water level around exposed superstructure of ship. Having difficulty controlling exuberance of all divisions. Self included. Large numbers of civilians have come down to the dock to observe. Detached Marines from other duties to make sure they did not interfere. No question of deliberate interference, just do not want them underfoot and causing distractions. Water flow is difficult to estimate but best guess is 6000 gpm.
Brad McFarlane, Cmdr, USN
16-20 Pumps steaming as before. (Great relief to use that phrase again.) Two minor casualties in the water pipes repaired. Pump engine running well and within Mr. McFarlane’s expectations. Humfra-Dar has added her pumps to the operation. Water level dropping slowly still, but noticeably. His Excellency, Adar, High Chief of Baalkpan, appeared briefly at the dock to inspect the proceedings. Informed Cmdr. McFarlane that a celebration of thanksgiving and appreciation would commence at 1900. Celebration seems general already at 1700. Chief Laney took a banca boat out to the protruding aft mast of the ship and ran a new ensign up. Tattered remnants of the old ensign (there since the Battle of Baalkpan) were removed and carefully brought ashore. Letts took them in his charge.
PERRY BRISTER, CMDR, USN
20-24 Lights rigged. Water flow uninterrupted. No stoppages. Cmdr. McFarlane has allowed the hands to join the celebration by divisions. Inspection details to remain in place by rotation. A damn good day.
Steven P. Riggs, Cmdr., USN Approved: Examined:
Riggs held a lighted Zippo so he could see, and Spanky signed his name by “Approved” at the bottom of the page. Then he handed the log to Letts, who signed beside “Examined.” Before he closed the log on the previous day, Letts glanced up at the date and shook his head.
“Five days late for the ‘year and a third,’ but close enough, I guess.”
“That’s one of the reasons I pushed so hard to pull the plug yesterday. Give the guys something to celebrate so they wouldn’t dwell on what we left behind. What we lost,” Spanky replied.
Letts returned the log to Spanky, who handed it to Campeti, who had the watch again. They were all tired, but nobody was going to oversee this operation but Walker. Sandra Tucker had arrived, looking disheveled, but as anxious as they were for her first glimpse of the ship. Now she stood beside them, peering intently into the predawn gloom of the dry-dock basin at the still only vaguely defined shape.
They stood on what had once been the old fitting-out pier, but was now merely a walkway between massive wooden cranes and equipment sheds. The skeletons of still more new warships rose on the other side of the basin, silhouetted against the new dawn. Until recently, when the dry dock neared completion, the new ships had remained the priority projects. Now, for just a few days, work on them would slow while a large percentage of the laborers concentrated on another task. Steam and smoke jetted from crude, noisy engines while ’Cat “snipes in training” crawled all over them, oiling every conceivable point of friction. Some spun the huge, amazingly efficient Lemurian-designed pumps, and others powered generators that ran electric pumps of human design. The jury was still out on which were better, but Spanky was pretty sure the ’Cat machines would last longer. Hoses pulsed and brown water coursed into the sea beyond the dry-dock wall.
Together, Sandra, Spanky, Alan, Campeti, and Bernie, a growing crowd of human and Lemurian sailors and Marines, sleepy civilian revelers, and finally, to no one’s real surprise, Adar himself, watched the dawn gradually reveal what the ravages of seawater and battle had done to USS Walker. Throughout the night, while most of her crew and the people of the city celebrated her raising, the water level in the dry dock had steadily dropped. Now she lay, with a slight list to port, where she’d settled after her fight with Amagi. Almost half of her upper hull was now exposed and every heart sank as they looked upon her.
A clear demarcation showed how much of the ship had remained above the surface when she sank. It was plain to see, about three-fourths of the way up her four slender funnels and about halfway up her aft mast. The forward mast was gone. Automatic weapons had riddled her bridge, but the line glared dark and glistening below her empty pilothouse windows like an angry, oily slash. Above it, the paint was blackened by fire and dark with rust. Below the line she looked… even worse.
An entirely new color had been created. Dark brown mixed with tan, with malignant yellow streaks for contrast. A fair amount of blackened green dangled here and there, where rotting vegetation festooned her. Angry red globs and smears were everywhere and of every different hue, as the rust that caused them dried. Slimy gray- black tar pooled and oozed, and covering all was a translucent rainbow slick of oil that had leaked from her ruptured bunkers. Hatches stood agape, revealing dank interiors. Tangled cables drooped down her side, and brackish water gushed from countless holes as the water level in the basin receded below that still inside the ship. Eel-like chopper fish squirmed like maggots on her deck, their vicious jaws gaping and snapping as their gills labored in the morning air. As primitive as they were, it might take them hours to die.
Walker was a corpse, Sandra thought, and they’d been nothing more than ghoulish grave robbers to expose her to the sun. Hot tears ran down her cheeks. Thank God Matthew wasn’t there to see it.
“Lord,” Sandison murmured, “what are we going to do?”
Spanky patted his arm and sighed. “We’re gonna fix her, Bernie.”
The way Walker rested looked almost normal by the time the first boats went across: listing slightly and a little low by the stern, but the water wasn’t much higher than the greasy black boot topping. She was still full of water, however, and jets of varying intensity coursed from her many wounds. As a result, the volume of water the pumps displaced was reduced as the day wore on. If they emptied the basin more quickly than the ship could drain, they ran the risk of causing even more damage. But her crew was restless to get to work, and by early that afternoon, the first repair parties clamored up her slippery side and stood once more on her leaning deck.
Spanky McFarlane put his hands on his skinny hips and stared hard in all directions, his lips grimly set. A short while before, he’d been Minister of Naval Engineering for an infant nation. Right now, for a time, he was Walker ’s engineering officer again and nothing else. “All right, ladies,” he said at last, as men and Lemurians squelched through the ooze, “we got work to do. Mr. Riggs? Take your party to the bridge. Charts, manuals, anything like that we might’ve missed before are the first priority. Easy does it. If there’s anything left of that stuff, it’ll go to pieces if you’re not careful.” He looked quickly around. “Campeti! Where’s Mr. Sandison?”
Campeti gestured over his shoulder. “Went tearing ass up to the bridge. We removed the gun director a long time ago ’cause we could get to the platform, but he wanted to see the torpedo directors. He was like a cat havin’ kittens!” Campeti caught himself and looked quickly around. Some of the Lemurians were looking at him strangely. “Uh, no offense. Different kinda cats… Little buggers…” He held his hands close together, but then his face clouded with embarrassment. “Oh, just get to work, damn it.”
Spanky shook his head. “Well, until he gets back, or sends for you to help him, I want you to check the four- inch fifties and see if there’s anything left of the machine guns on the amidships deckhouse. When you get through with that, put together a detail to salvage as many fire hoses as you can. We’ll start rinsing the old girl off.” He couldn’t stop a grin. “Just think what the Bosun would say if he saw his decks in such a state.”
