Sea Control - Sea Control 520 - Witness to Neptune's Inferno with Dr. David Winkler

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Links1. Witness to Neptune’s Inferno: The Pacific War Diary of Lieutenant Commander Lloyd M. Mustin, USS Atlanta (CL 51), by David F. Winkler, Casemate, 2024.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Today's guest is Dr. David Winkler, and he's going to share his findings from the Pacific War Diary of Lieutenant Commander Lloyd Muston as Muston and the USS Atlanta fought their way across the Pacific. This episode was edited and produced by Jim Jarvie. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. And now, Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, Shemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control.

My guest today is Dr. David Winkler, and we're going to be discussing his new book, Witness to Neptune's Inferno, The Pacific War Diary of Lieutenant Commander Lloyd M. Mustin, USS Atlanta, CL-51. David, welcome. Could you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself? Okay. Well, I'm a retired Navy surface warfare commander, so I can better relate a little bit to Lloyd Mustin. I got my commission through the Navy ROTC unit at Penn State back in 1980. and then served active duty for 10 years. When the Cold War ended, I switched to the Navy Reserve. During that time, I got my master's degree in international affairs

and then a doctorate in history at American University. Picked up a job for a quarter century at the Naval Historical Foundation as their staff historian. They're based down at the Washington Navy Yard. I also was with the Navy History and Heritage Command Combat Documentation. Now, one of my chores with the Naval Historical Foundation was to do world histories. And one of the interesting individuals, I met Vice Admiral Henry Muston when I was doing my dissertation research at American University on the incidents at Sea Agreement. He headed up our delegation, which met annually with the Russians in the 1980s.

And so I had met him previously, working on my dissertation on this. Covenant's building, had it with the Russians. I had decided, okay, well, I want, Weston's an interesting story. I want to capture his oral history, which I did. And if you go to the Naval Historical Foundation website, you can click on it and get a transcript. Now, at the end of the interview, he turned to me and he said, hey, I have this diary here from my father, white busted World War II. Do you think there's anything anybody would have any interest in? And I took it. I took it back to the office, started looking at it.

And I said to myself, wow, this is an interesting perspective about World War II. So let me start with that, and then I'll let you have, I guess, a follow-up question. I do. I'm just going to jump in here to remind the audience that all opinions today are our own, not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. What did you do during your active duty time in the Navy as a surface warfare officer? Yeah. So I was on an ammunition ship based out on the East Coast. I made three Mediterranean deployments in the early 80s. And then I was assigned to the officer in charge of a military detachment on USN's Navasota, which was assigned to Westpac. We went into the I.O. and operated a lot out of the Philippines. We also operated in the Sea of Japan, and it was like doing one mission where we were off Vladivostok. We had like three aircraft carriers were simulating attacks on Vladivostok, and the Russians are coming out.

We're signaling to each other, and we had this agreement in place, so everybody was relatively well-behaved. That's where I got interested in the incident at Sea of Japan. So, and then I got a lot of sea duty and spent a tour in Navy Recruiting Command and a tour at reserve centers, and then I went into the reserves full time. I meant to follow up when you mentioned this earlier, but are you telling me that there's a paper out there that you've written about the Incidents at Sea Agreement? Yeah, the paper, well, the dissertation was published by the Naval Institute in 2000 under the title Cold War at Sea, and because of the fact that the Incidents at Sea Agreement is

still germane today with the South China Sea, the Naval Institute asked me to republish the book in 2017 under the title Incidents at Sea, and I updated the original dissertation to include the situation in the South China Sea. Oh, by the way, the dissertation, you know, the first book, not only has it been published by the Naval Institute, but it's also been published out in Canada. And there's also two Chinese editions of the book. So it's being read overseas. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Russian edition of it. I'm not getting royalties. Okay. I'm going to follow up with you afterwards here, because I think that the origin of that document, I think would make for a great discussion. But we'll come back to

the diary here. Who is Lloyd Muston? Yeah, well, Lloyd Muston is one of two boys of Henry and Corrine Muston. Henry I, as I call him, graduated from the Naval Academy in the 1890s and served in the Philippines, was involved in the Spanish-American War, and a very sharp expert on gunnery in fact he patents quite a few range fighting devices but the family's from philadelphia and visiting friends back in philadelphia like a 1911 time frame there's a friend who has an airplane and the two of them go off for airplane rides and he's booked so he's interested in naval aviation so happy to first goes into aviation and eventually establishes our naval air station in Pensacola, the cradle of naval aviation.

There, in November 1915, takes the first catapult shot of the armored protected cruiser of North Carolina. His two sons are sure to take a look at that, watch Dad take off, and eventually Henry Muston's going to become the deputy chief of naval aviation in the early 1920s. Suffers a heart aneurysm and dies late.

leaving the wife and two sons. Lloyd eventually is going to graduate from the Naval Academy following his father's footsteps in 1932, but his eyes are not going to cut it for aviation. So he's going to be committed to being a surface warfare officer. He's actually going to be assigned to the Augusta out in the Asiatic Fleet, which is captained by a Chester W. Nimitz. So, you know, he has a good role model as far as how to run ships.

But, you know, Nimbus is one of those guys who entrusts chores to his junior officers and lets them grow. And so Lloyd Mustin has that tour. He has a tour of destroyers. He's sent to MIT to learn about ballistics and engineering. And then he's sent to the USS Atlanta. If the Atlanta is the first of a kind light cruiser designed in the 1936 timeframe, they realized that aviation is going to be a problem for ships. And so we're thinking about designing ships that can combat airplanes. And the Atlanta is really designed as an anti-aircraft light cruiser.

Instead of having those heavy 8-inch guns or 6-inch guns, it's fitted with eight mounts of twin 5-inch 38 rapid fire guns that spit out upwards of more than 30 rounds a minute out of each barrel. And then just bristling with the lighter, like 20 millimeter and other anti-aircraft guns. And Lustin, because of his expertise in gunnery, is assigned to this ship, which is going to be built in the federal dry dock in Kearney, New Jersey. And it's going to be delivered and commissioned after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The ship is put into commission on Christmas Eve in 1941. The first ship we put into commission after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. So the Atlanta shows up off Guadalcanal. What was the sea control situation like at Guadalcanal when Atlanta arrived?

And why was Mustin so upset about it? Because if you read the diary, the tone will catch you a little off guard coming from, I think he was a lieutenant at the time. Yeah, well, he's going to make lieutenant commander while the ship is in Pasco Bay, Portland, and goes through the canal. They're going to get out to Pearl Harbor, and they're not there in time to join the Coral Sea battle. And Atlanta will be protecting the Hornet during the Battle of Midway. Doesn't fire its guns in anger because it's Yorktown that takes the breath of the Japanese attacks. So then, of course, you have Operation Watchtower, Guadalcanal. And the Atlanta is sent down to support the amphibious operations against that island.

The Marines land on August the 7th. Not too much resistance on Guana Canal, a lot of resistance on Agui, but the Marines overwhelmed that. And then you have a situation where we have these aircraft carriers that are providing air support, but they're worried about the Japanese, you know, land-based bombers out of Rabaul coming down. So the Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, you know, initially he says, okay, you only got two days of air cover. And where the Marines are, you know, they would appreciate having air support. But after two days, you know, Butchers, Trudeau has already pulled his aircraft carriers out and leaves the Marines kind of sitting there with some surface ships. The Japanese come down for a night attack and have what's called the Battle of Sabo Island, where we just get blood. And that really sets the tone, because whereas we've had the situation in Guadalcanal under control, we come into a situation where the Japanese are basically going to order, run, own the night, and then the United States, we're going to be owning the daylight.

Once we have airplanes set down at Henderson Field, but without the direct round-the-clock support, Guadalcanal is just going to drag on, and it's going to frustrate Boston that we're not supporting the Marines the way we should. What surprised you in the diary? Well, what surprised me was his bluntness, and he's not one to criticize. hold back on criticism. At Midway, Spruance is well known for the fact that after our success on the 4th, he decides to pull the fleet eastward to avoid a night confrontation with the Japanese. And in his diary, he writes that when King finds out about the cheap and able operations, Ernest King that Spruance had done this fullback. I'm sure Spruance is going to pay a price for this. I think history determines that that was kind of the right move because the Japanese didn't make

a moment east to try a overnight battle, and we would have been overwhelmed. And then during the full Water Canal campaign, Mustard is very frustrated with the Vice Admiral in charge, Vice Admiral Bromley, Robert Bromley, and the fact that he's very passive about committing surface combatants to protect Water Canal at night. is you're going to have this steady stream of Japanese reinforcements coming down what's called the Tokyo Express at night down this thing called the slot of all dropping off the Japanese troops ammunition reinforcement and then scattering away for daylight before the bombers and fighters from Henderson Field and Guadalcanal could get at her. So one of the major turning points at Guadalcanal is the relief of Gormley by Halsey. How did Muston respond to Halsey's arrival? Oh, my goodness. It was like, the sun is shining, and he has a passenger in there,

Mr. Motto. Things are now going to change here in the Southwest Pacific. We now have somebody willing to fight and take you on. So it definitely was a morale change for Buston. The fact that Halsey is now on the scene, broadly, he never left his command ship down in Gomea. Whereas Halsey, he flies the Gwana Canal, meets with General Vandegrift, and makes a commitment then to provide the Marines the support, and he's willing to take some risks, some calculated risk, because the Japanese are going to make a full concerted effort to win the battle towards the end of October. What we're going to have is called the Battle of Santa Cruz, where we're going to lose the

Hornet, okay? And so we're going to be down to the Enterprise, which is slightly damaged, and that's it. So we're going to lose the watch. The watch is going to be taken out by Japanese torpedoes. Boston's frustrated with that. The Saratoga, again, is a victim of torpedoes fired by Japanese submarines. It's frustrating to Boston that we're holding our carriers back to an area south of Juana Canal, in the area which he labels Torpedo Junction, where, you know, they're too far

way to support the Marines in Iguana Canal, and they're just, you know, opening themselves up to be targets. So, if we're losing these ships and, you know, Japanese submarines on the prowl, not only do we lose, you know, the Saratoga State in our action, but the battleship North Carolina is also hit with torpedoes. What did Musnad have to say about Atlanta's loss, and did you notice any change in tone in the diary after that well here's what happens um the last entry in transitive diary is before the the naval battle of water canal she curves the 12 13th of november it's a yeah the last entry is about the 26th of songbird right after norman scott is assigned to the ship

Norman Scott meets the Japanese in an engagement earlier in October, the Battle of Cape S. France, which we have, the Japanese are coming down through the slot, and he has a formation of ships, which is a classic crossing the T-type formation, and he's able to extract the toll on the Japanese. So we kind of have our first night victory, thanks to Norman Scott. Norman Scott is going to be assigned to Atlanta, and that's a positive thing. Unfortunately, Norman Scott's going to lose his life on Atlanta during that battle of the 12th and 13th down with two battleships. And we have Admiral Callaghan is the rear Admiral Callaghan, who is senior to Scott by just a few days, is given command of this formation of 13 ships, cruisers and destroyers. And, you know, he sends them into this formation in Japanese ships. It happens to be a broken formation due to the weather, and they just get themselves into a melee. And Atlanta is lit up by an enemy warship destroyer.

And the reaction of the captain on board the Atlanta Jags, counter-illuminate, and the reaction between either Lusted or the other gunnery officer was like, we're not going to counter-illuminate fire. So they slow around, they open fire, and they take out that Japanese destroyer. But by opening fire, it's kind of like tells everybody on both sides that here we are. And the next thing you know, Atlanta's being cut off with gunnery. And, you know, one torpedo, it blows out the forward engine room. The second torpedo is going to hit the side, but fortunately not explode. So Atlanta is out of action very early in this megalithic, which it's going to eventually, it's going to spare Guadalcanal from a heavy bombardment. But only one ship on the American side gets up on stage.

The Japanese suffer some losses. Eventually, airplanes off of Guadalcanal take out the Kai, which is a Japanese battleship. And then there's going to be another battle two nights later. He was considered part of the Battle of Guadalquivir, where the battleship Washington takes out the Japanese battleship Parish of Guadalquivir, and that really is kind of the turning point. There is a book just out last year by Paul Stilwell, Battleship Commander, and he has this description of that battleship model fighting. It's beautifully done. then one final question it's a little bit off from what everything else that we talked about but if you read hornfishers neptunes inferno and then i know trent hone spoke about some of this in his book learning war there's a lot of consternation among more junior u.s officers

about the senior officers not really understanding the technology that they had available to them specifically like rated things like radar that made some of these battles maybe more closely contested than they necessarily needed to be. And I think Scott's name, maybe Callahan's as well, came up in this where they would have the Japanese at sort of extended ranges and wait for them to get much closer because that's what they thought they needed to do when they could have been opening fire at much greater ranges here. Did Mustin get into any of that sort of frustration or events about any of that in the course of the book? Because I would imagine as this young officer who's gone to MIT is probably on the cutting edge of technology here on our newest

like cruiser he would have had exposure to some of these technologies and understood like the sort of the full capacity that the vessel was working with and now he's working with uh you know gunnery gun radar directors and in fact while lancers at the brooklyn navy are you know they're tracking subway trains crossing the manhattan bridge with their radars so um it's a He exporiates Spruits at Midway that night. One of the reasons why he thinks Spruits should have hung around is, he says, with all the radars on all the ships, we should be able to see the Japanese coming over the horizon. And with our superior speed, we should be able to see. So, you know, that being said, there is an episode in the book where Atlanta is on its transit to Pearl Harbor, and they have to investigate.

There's an island on the way, which was a place where they used to harvest guano. and he was so the radar they had the surface search radar he felt more confident than having a look up well up on the mast he just didn't have that much

confidence in that radar the interesting thing about Aquatic Canal that night actually is that had Callaghan done a right to change the course of his line of ships

so that it was crossing and forming a line of that classic crossing the T and then used his radar to get fire on the Japanese. I'm not too sure that they come out ahead. This is not like Surigao Strait where we had the battleships from Pearl Harbor with their 14- and 16-inch guns lined up against the incoming Japanese,

as you had cruisers and destroyers with the heaviest guns, or like 8-inchers like out of San Francisco, and then you had two battleships coming on. It might have been like shooting ducks at a duck gallery with these battleships just to pick them up, the ships on the horizon. Especially, this is the one thing about the night battle on the Guadalcanal, which Trent Hurd talks about in his Learning Wars, the fact that the Japanese are, we're using smokeless powder, okay, which at night is dumb because you just see a flash, a bright flash.

Whereas the Japanese are using smoke, the traditional smoke powder, which the blast of the smoke coming out of the barrels covers the flash. So the Japanese have an advantage in fighting night warfare. So I think there were some three more studies that indicated, like San Francisco battling a Japanese battleship, its best chances were getting close. and so these ships got in close with their with the japanese and and you know walled them over but you know as a consequence they also got so yeah so i think maybe callahan had an idea that you know this was the only way that he was going to be effective in combat of course we because he did not survive the battle either we he was around for you know post that analyst Well, unfortunately, that's all that we have time for today.

I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. David Winkler. David, where can we find you online, and what are you working on next? Well, yeah, online. I have a weekly e-letter to the National Maritime Historical Society. It's called Tuesday Tidings. So if you want to go to the National Maritime Historical Society and sign up, If you'll find out everything that's going on in the world of naval history, every Tuesday, it's a free service. I just sent my next book to the—I also published America's First Aircraft Carrier about the USS Langley.

That came out last month at the Naval Institute Press. And then I just sent another book to the Naval Institute Press, which is going to be called Destroyers at War. I'm not actually the author. The author of the book is Admiral James L. Holloway. He wrote this book called Aircraft Carriers at War, talking about his life as a naval aviator post-World War II. Well, you know, he was the chairman of the Naval Historical Foundation. I had the possession of the chapters of his time in the Navy on destroyers in World War II. and I'm publishing those edited

chapters under the title Destroyers at War. It's a prequel from the Naval Institute, I think later this year. Well, those all sound fascinating. We can probably bring you back here to talk about some of that, but thank you again for joining us. To listeners,

thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Help me, Bob, I'm bullying the addicts. Why are they bullying the addicts? Help me, Bob, I'm bullying the addicts. Put it out in Shemora.