Free Down to the Sea by Bruce Henderson Page B

Charles Arthur Tabberer, twenty-six, of Kansas City, Kansas. As Tabberer and his VF-5 squadron mates climbed for altitude tobe in position to dive on enemy aircraft, a flotilla of invasion ships took up positions below. * When the aerial attack came an hour after the landings began, the initial wave consisted of twenty-seven twin-engine bombers escorted by seventeen Zero fighters, both types of aircraft built by Mitsubishi. They were pounced on by eighteen Wildcats swooping through the clouds like shrieking birds of prey. Leading a two-plane section, Tabberer, although “viciously intercepted” by Zeros, “gallantly pressed home his attacks” against the bombers. Last seen “dogfighting a Zero,” Tabberer was reported missing in action; neither his body nor his aircraft was found. He was awarded the Distinguish Flying Cross posthumously for his “courageous fighting spirit and resolute devotion to duty,” which resulted in the destruction of at least five enemy bombers and “played a major role in disrupting the Japanese attack.” †
    During christening ceremonies on February 18, 1944, an overcast day on the Houston Ship Channel, 50 miles up from Galveston Bay, a bottle of champagne was broken against Tabberer ’s bow by Mary M. Tabberer, the brunette widow of the war hero, with his mother, Mrs. S. W. Tabberer, serving as matron of honor and cradling a dozen red roses. Their husband and son had been gone for a year and a half, but for the two women the pain of their loss, not camouflaged by the ceremony, lingered on unsmiling faces.
    Early in the war, the Allies were in short supply of armed escort vessels, and enemy submarines in both oceans exacted a heavy toll on merchant shipping. With full-size destroyers desperately needed to operate with the fast-attack fleets, not enough could be allocated for convoy duty. The solution to the escort shortage came from a new design: a ship that was easier and less costly to construct, and while smaller and slower than a destroyer, it was an equal in antisubmarine warfare capabilities. A destroyer escort needed to be able to maneuver only relative to a slow convoy—merchant marine or Navy supply vessels—which generally traveled at 10 to 12 knots, and defend itself against enemy aircraft while detecting and destroying submarines, which averaged less than 10 knots submerged and about 20 knots on the surface. The first destroyer escort was commissioned in April 1943; nearly 500 were built during the war, with 78 of them going to the British Royal Navy, which designated them captain-class frigates. There were six destroyer-escort classes in all, with the main differences being the power plants (diesel or steam) and armament. The Navy’s smallest major combat vessel, destroyer escorts ranged in size from 1,140 to 1,450 tons displacement. The destroyer escorts—with a much tighter turning radius—were more maneuverable than conventional destroyers and carried all the latest antisubmarine warfare equipment. In heavy weather, however, it was always a rough-and-tumble ride aboard a destroyer escort, rolling one minute and plunging the next, with often either the bow or the fantail rising out of the water and the foredeck swamped. Destroyer escort sailors joked that they should be receiving both flight and submarine pay since they were in the air or underwater much of the time.
    It had taken less than five weeks to build the 1,350-ton Tabberer, which at 306 feet in length was markedly shorter than a destroyer but similar in beam with a width of 38 feet. * Tabberer ’s two steam turbines produced 12,000 horsepower for a flank speed of 24 knots, slightly faster than the submarines she was designed to hunt and kill but at least 10 knots slower than full-size destroyers. Tabberer was one of the new so-called 5-inchdestroyer escorts ( John C. Butler class), so named because she was fitted with the bigger gun mounts (forward and