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Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors Paperback – August 28, 2007
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"Son, we’re going to Hell."
The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn’t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death.
Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, the deadly rain of fire from Japanese bombers, and the almost superhuman effort of the crew as they miraculously escaped disaster again and again–until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner. For more than three years their fate would be a mystery to families waiting at home.
In the brutal privation of jungle POW camps dubiously immortalized in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, the war continued for the men of the Houston—a life-and-death struggle to survive forced labor, starvation, disease, and psychological torture. Here is the gritty, unvarnished story of the infamous Burma–Thailand Death Railway glamorized by Hollywood, but which in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals, who fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, will–power—and the undying faith that their country would prevail.
Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of Houston’s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it’s easy to forget that every single word is true.
- Print length576 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateAugust 28, 2007
- Dimensions6 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100553384503
- ISBN-13978-0553384505
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"On sea and on land, these intrepid sailors endured enough for a thousand lifetimes. In this riveting account, Hornfischer carefully reconstructs a story none of us should be allowed to forget."—Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers
“Hornfischer has produced another meticulously researched naval history page-turner in Ship of Ghosts. He manages to fuse powerful human stories into the great flow of historical events with a singular story-telling talent.”—John F. Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy, author of On Seas of Glory
“Hornfischer has done it again. His narrative is fine-tuned and always compelling but where he truly excels is in his evocative, often lyrical descriptions of combat at sea. Those who enjoyed his previous best-seller will love Ship of Ghosts—military history at its finest.”—Alex Kershaw, author of The Bedford Boys and The Few
“Masterly…[the] description of the huge and terrifying naval engagements are as overwhelming a stretch of historical writing as I have ever come across…. Beautifully written and heartgripping.”—Adam Nicolson, author of God’s Secretaries
“Recounts perhaps the most devastating untold saga of World War II in piercing detail.”—Donovan Webster, author of The Burma Road
“Hornfischer is quickly establishing himself as doing for the Navy what popular historian Stephen Ambrose did for the Army…. So great is the drama of the Houston and its survivors that this story seems to tell itself.” —Rocky Mountain News
“With vivid and visceral descriptions of the chaos and valor onboard the doomed Houston…the author penetrates the thoughts and fears of adrenaline-pumped sailors in the heat of combat…. Hornfischer masterfully shapes the narrative…. breathing life into an unforgettable epic of human endurance.” —USA Today
“Hornfischer has painted a compelling picture of one of the most gallant ships and one of the grimmest campaigns in American naval history. He has a positive genius for depicting the surface-warfare sailor in a tight spot. May he write long and give them more memorials.” –Booklist, starred review
“What kind of yarn is Ship of Ghosts? Put Stephen Ambrose aboard the cruiser once known as ‘the Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast.’ Next, bring Patrick O’Brien for nautical detail and high seas drama. Then factor in Joseph Conrad for tales of men under stress in exotic climes…. Naval history of the highest order.” –Metrowest [Boston] Daily News
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Off the island of Bali, in the silhouette of mountains made sacred by the favor of local gods, a warship plied the black waters of an equatorial sea. The night of February 4, 1942, found her moving swiftly toward a port on the southern coast of the adjoining island of Java. She had sustained a deep wound that day, an aerial bomb striking her after turret, charring and melting the gun house and its entire stalk. The great blast killed forty-six men. Her captain now sought port to patch his ship and bury his dead with honors. For the flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, this was the first blow of a war not yet sixty days old.
The USS Houston, a heavy cruiser, was the largest combat vessel the U.S. Navy had committed to the Dutch East Indies. She was bound for the port of Tjilatjap. Its colliding consonants compelled American sailors to give the town the more symphonious nickname "Slapjack" or, chewing their words more bitterly, "that lousy dump." As the thunder of Japan's opening offensive washed over Indonesia in early 1942, Tjilatjap was one of three havens that Allied warships still maintained in these dangerous waters. With the enemy's invasion fleets pressing down from the north and his planes attacking from land bases ever closer to Java, those harbors were fast becoming untenable. The previous day, February 3, Japanese bombers struck Surabaya, the city in the island's east that was home to Adm. Thomas C. Hart's threadbare squadron of surface combatants. To the west, the port at Batavia (now Jakarta) was a marked target too. As Hart's commanders well knew, Japan's aviators had needed just forty-eight hours after the start of war on December 8 to smash American airpower in the Philippines, sink the two largest Allied warships in the region–the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse–and land an invasion force on Luzon. The Imperial red tide knew no pause. Flowing southward, operating at high tempo by day and by night, the Japanese executed a leapfrogging series of amphibious invasions down the coasts of Borneo and Celebes, each gain consolidated and used to stage the next assault. The shadow of the Japanese offensive loomed over Java, where the Allies would make a last stand in defense of the old Dutch colonial outpost and aim to blunt Japan's onrushing advance toward Australia.
At midnight of February 3, alerted by Allied aircraft to the presence of a Japanese invasion fleet in Makassar Strait, north of Java, the Houston had departed Surabaya with a flotilla of U.S. and Dutch warships–the aged light cruiser USS Marblehead, the Dutch light cruisers De Ruyter and Tromp, and an escort of eight destroyers. Under Dutch Rear Adm. Karel W. F. M. Doorman, the striking force steamed by night to avoid Japanese aircraft. But the distance to their target was such that the Allied ships had no choice but to cross the Flores Sea by daylight on February 4. No friendly fighter planes were on hand to cover them. It was about ten o'clock on that bright morning when Japanese bombers began appearing overhead, ending Doorman's mission before it ever really began.
That day had started as so many of them did, with the Houston's Marine bugler putting his brass bell to the public address microphone and blowing the call to air defense. As men sprinted to their general quarters stations, they could look up and see the Japanese bombers droning by, one wave after the next, nine at a time, fifty-four in all, locked in tight V formations, silvery fuselages glinting in the sun. Nosing over into shallow power glides from seventeen thousand feet, the twin-engine G3M Nells began their bombing runs.
Capt. Albert Harold Rooks steered his ship through the maelstrom of splashes, some of the bombs landing close enough aboard to fracture rivets belowdecks, some falling in patterns dense enough to conceal the six-hundred-foot-long ship behind a temporary mountain range of foamy white seawater. Watching the Houston under bombardment, a sailor on another ship said, "All this water just sort of hung in the air. Then it started to fall back, and out from underneath all this stuff comes the Houston going thirty knots." A master ship handler, the fifty-year-old skipper had an intuitive sense of his cruiser's gait. He was expert in dodging the bombs that fluttered earthward in the midmorning sun, never hesitating to stretch the limits of the engineering plant or test the skill and endurance of the throttlemen and water tenders and machinists, who gamely kept pace with the sudden engine orders and speed changes, risking the destruction of their delicate machinery by the slightest misstep. Relying on the smart reactions of his snipes as an extension of his own hand, Rooks maneuvered his cruiser like none the crew had ever seen, accelerating and slowing, ordering "crashbacks" that wrenched his engines from full ahead straight into full astern, thus steering not only by rudder but by counterturning the propeller screws, the starboard pair surging ahead while the port pulled astern. "He handled that ship like you or I would handle a motorboat," said Howard R. Charles, a private in the Houston's seventy-eight-man Marine detachment.
By acclamation Rooks was one of the brightest lights to wear four gold bars in the prewar U.S. Navy. He had been Admiral Hart's aide when the Asiatic Fleet boss was superintendent of the Naval Academy. On the teaching staff at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1940, Rooks showed a keen analytical mind, and it was with no evident sarcasm that colleagues called him the second coming of the great naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. In the few months since taking over the Houston in Manila, the quietly authoritative skipper had moved out of the shadow of a beloved predecessor and won, it seems, a reputation as a sort of minor deity.
An SOC Seagull floatplane was on the Houston's catapult, propeller whipping the air at full throttle, its pilot ready for an explosive-charged launch. Under normal conditions in the days before radar, the SOCs were used for reconnaissance and gunnery spotting. Flung aloft from catapults mounted on the quarterdeck amidships, the biplanes would fly out ahead of the ship, climb to around two thousand feet, and spend two or three hours weaving back and forth on either side of the cruiser's base course heading. In combat, they could loiter over an enemy fleet, signaling corrections to the gunnery department. The Seagulls were light enough to grip the air at a speed as low as sixty miles per hour, permitting a leisurely reconnaissance pattern. But now the idea was to get the vulnerable, combustible planes off the ship before the Japanese got lucky with one of their bombs.
As another formation of bombers crossed overhead, the antiaircraft officer couldn't stand waiting for the SOC to get airborne. His five-inch guns, elevated high, roared. At once the muzzle blast, just ten feet from the plane, tore the canvas skin right off the plane. As Lt. Harold S. Hamlin recalled, "the pilot found himself sitting on a picked chicken–the blast had removed every stitch of fabric from the plane. Pilot and crewman scrambled out, and the forlorn-looking plane, naked as a jay-bird, was jettisoned."
The Houston belched so much smoke from her after stack that the antiaircraft crews lost use of the aft rangefinder, bathed in black soot. So they aimed by eye. Good as the crews on her eight open-mount five-inch guns were, they were shocked to find that their ammunition was of little use. Their first salvo arced skyward right into the midst of the bombers. But only one of the four rounds was seen to explode. That sorry proportion held up through the day. Of the four hundred odd antiaircraft shells the Houston's crews fired, nearly three hundred were duds. In the prewar years, the Navy Department, mindful of costs, had refused to let its ships fire live rounds in antiaircraft gunnery drills. The Houston's gunnery officer had appealed time and again for permission to use live ammunition but was turned down. The projectiles thus saved had been left to sit and age in the magazines. Now, as the realization dawned on them that most of their stored projectiles were little more than outsize paperweights, the antiaircraft crews became "mad as scalded dogs" and fired all the faster, if to little result.
During the bombardment that rained down on them that morning, the light cruiser Marblehead was straddled perfectly by a stick of seven bombs, engulfing the old ship in giant splashes. Two struck home, and a near miss, detonating underwater close aboard to port, did as much damage as the direct hits. Fifteen men were killed as fires raged fore and aft. With part of her hull dished in, scooping in seawater at high pressure, seams and rivets leaking, the Marblehead listed to starboard, settling by the head, her rudder jammed into a hard port turn. Seeing her distress, Captain Rooks turned the Houston toward her to bring his gunners to bear on the attackers. As he did so, another V of bombers passed overhead at fifteen thousand feet. A second flock of bombs wobbled earthward. They missed–all of them except for the stray.
Some say that the lone five-hundred-pounder must have gotten hung up in the Japanese plane's bomb bay on release. With its carefully calculated trajectory interrupted, it wandered from the path of its explosive peers, arcing down outside the field of view from the pilothouse, where Rooks, head tilted skyward, binoculars in hands, was watching the flight of ordnance and conning his ship to avoid it. Unseen until it was far too late, the wayward bomb found the ship. It punched through the searchlight platform mounted midway up the Houston's sixty-foot-high mainmast, rattled down through its great steel tripod, and struck just forward of the aft eight-inch gun mount, whose triple barrels were trained to port, locked and loaded to fend off low-flying planes.
The bomb's blast reverberated all along the Houston's length, and up and down its seven levels of decks. The sickened crew felt the cruiser lift, rock, and reel. When fires ignited the silk-encased powder bags stored in the number-three hoist, a vicious flash fire engulfed the gun chamber and reached down into the powder circle. Yellow-white smoke washed over the fantail.
Intense heat inside the heavily perforated gun house, or perhaps a firing circuit shorted out in the deluge from the fire hoses, caused the center eight-inch rifle to discharge. The untimely blast startled the crew, and they collided with one another diving for cover. The powder-fed storm of flames took nearly four dozen of Captain Rooks's best men. They never stood a chance, not the doomed crew inside Turret Three, nor the men in the powder circle and handling room below them, nor the after repair party, cut down nearly to a man at their general quarters station, right under the hole in the main deck. In nearby crew's quarters, men were found blown straight through the springs of their bunks. Scraps of clothing stuck in the springs were all that remained of them, identification made possible only by the stenciling on their shirts. They could not have known what hit them. But far worse was in store for everyone aft should the flames reach the eight-inch powder bags piled in the magazine.
Fearing a catastrophic explosion, Cdr. Arthur L. Maher, the Houston's gunnery officer, rallied the firefighting crews and sent two petty officers into the scorched ruin of the gun mount searching for survivors. One of them, aviation machinist's mate second class John W. Ranger, played a hose on the other, Charles Fowler, to keep him cool. Then Ranger joined Fowler inside, armed with a carbon dioxide canister to fight the flames, the heat from which was already bubbling grease smeared on the eight-inch projectiles kept in ready storage.
By the light of a battle lantern in the turret's lower chambers, gunner's mate second class Czeslaus Kunke and seaman second class Jack D. Smith dogged down the metal flaps that separated the magazine from the burning handling room and flooded the magazine and powder hoist. "I told John [Ranger] if we had not stopped the fire before it arrived at the magazine he would have been the first Navy astronaut," Smith wrote. Their quick thinking and a measure of good fortune saved the ship from a final calamity.
With the Houston's main battery hobbled and the Marblehead damaged, Admiral Doorman aborted the mission, ordering the wounded cruisers to Tjilatjap for repair. As evening fell, Captain Rooks steered his bruised ship toward safety, out of the Flores Sea through Alas Strait, then west into the easternmost littorals of the Indian Ocean. Steaming in the shadows of the holy peaks of Lombok and Bali, the Houston's crew gathered their dead shipmates on the fantail. The Houston's two medical officers, Cdr. William A. Epstein and Lt. Clement D. Burroughs, exhausted themselves patching up the wounded and easing the worst of them into death. "I'm convinced they were never the same again," wrote Marine 2nd Lt. Miles Barrett. "For weeks their nerves were completely shattered." An ensign named John B. Nelson had the chore of identifying the charred corpses as they lay in makeshift state. Nelson's eyes filled with tears as he studied the remains, identifying some and guessing at others. Then they were covered with a canvas tarpaulin to await burial. A carpenter's mate oversaw the crew detailed to assemble caskets from scrap lumber. Their hammers tapped and tapped, marking time through the night. "War came to us in a real way. It knocked all the cockiness out of us," said Sgt. Charley L. Pryor Jr. of the ship's Marine detachment. "We saw what war could be in its real fury, just in those brief few moments."
A ceremonial watch was set in honor of the dead. Seaman first class John Bartz, a stout Minnesotan from the Second Division, held his rifle at attention on the midwatch, fidgeting in the starlit darkness. What unsettled him was not so much the corpses but their unexpected movements at sudden intervals: arms and legs twitching, rising and reaching in death's stiffening grip.
"I'm telling you, it was spooky," Bartz said. "It was really scary when you're standing there, a young kid about eighteen years old. I was glad to see my relief at four."
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam; Reprint edition (August 28, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 576 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553384503
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553384505
- Item Weight : 1.38 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #580,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,179 in Naval Military History
- #1,188 in WWII Biographies
- #5,145 in World War II History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
James D. Hornfischer's books have led reviewers to rate him as one of the most commanding naval historians writing today. His awards include the 2018 Samuel Eliot Morison Award, given by the Board of Trustees of the USS Constitution Museum for work that “reflects the best of Admiral Morison: artful scholarship, patriotic pride, an eclectic interest in the sea and things maritime, and a desire to preserve the best of our past for future generations.”
His most recent book is “The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944–1945”. Recipient of the Navy League’s 2017 Commodore John Barry Book Award, it is a major narrative of the U.S. Navy’s Central Pacific drive in World War II, covering the air, land and sea operations that seized the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, as well as the strategic air operations conducted from the Marianas that ended the war.
“Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal” (2011), a New York Times bestseller, was chosen as a best book of the year by numerous book reviews. “Ship of Ghosts” (2006) told the story of the cruiser USS Houston (CA-30) and the odyssey of its crew in Japanese captivity. “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” (2004), a combat narrative about the Battle off Samar, received the Samuel Eliot Morison Award from the Naval Order of the United States and was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best books on “war as soldiers know it” and by Naval History magazine as one of “a dozen Navy classics.” Hornfischer has also collaborated with Marcus Luttrell, the bestselling author of “Lone Survivor,” on Luttrell’s second autobiography, “Service: A Navy SEAL at War” (2012).
All of Hornfischer’s books have been selections of the Navy Professional Reading program, managed by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV). He is a regular contributor for the Wall Street Journal and has written for Smithsonian, Naval History, Naval Institute Proceedings, and other periodicals. He has lectured at the U.S. Naval Academy, Marine Corps University at Quantico, the National WWII Museum, the National Museum of the Pacific War, and other venues.
Hornfischer's motivation to write about the U.S. military reaches back to his childhood, from his explorations of the school library's 940.54 Dewey Decimal section, building Monogram and Revell model ships and aircraft, watching "Black Sheep Squadron" on NBC (sublimely ahistorical but redeemed by Robert Conrad's portrayal of Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of VMF-214), and absorbing the epic intonations of Laurence Olivier in "The World at War" on PBS.
A native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Texas School of Law, Hornfischer lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and their children.
Author photo: © Mark Matson, www.matsonphoto.net
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=== The Good Stuff ===
* The book begins on board the USS Houston as it sees action in the early days of WWII, but the majority of the book is the story of the men who survived the shipwreck and were taken prisoner by the Japanese. Brutally treated, they went on to various fates in the Japanese POW system, but most of the book centers on the struggle of many of these prisoners to build the trans-Burma railroad.
* There are quite a few "named" characters, and we learn some of the details of their struggles. The book is a nice mix of history and personal stories, and relates the struggles of the prisoners to the war in general quite well. There is certainly violence and material not for the squeamish, but James Hornfisher doesn't sensationalize any of it.
* The writing is an easy-to-read style, perhaps a touch too informal, but captures the story quite well. It is ultimately a sad story, although there are several "happy" ending buried in it. I had trouble putting the book down, and ended up reading it in two sittings.
* Because of the nature of the work, there are not a lot of references, or even multiple independent sources. Despite that, the material comes across as believable, even though it is in direct contrast to other "non-fiction" account, specifically The Bridge Over the River Kwai.
=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===
* Some of the material does get a bit repetitive, although that is the nature of a brutal imprisonment.
* I didn't like the ending chapters of the book. The author seems conflicted between how much follow up to do on the named characters. He hints that there were definite PTSD issues, but avoids a serious or detailed discussion. And while there are some anecdotal stories of the post-war life of some of the men, there is no organized attempt to catalog their life histories.
=== Summary ===
The book was one of the more amazing "personal accounts" I have ever read, and included a lot of things I never knew about. I hadn't considered that a "free market" thrived, even in the jungles of Burma, between prisoners, natives and even Japanese captors. I also never knew the role of "Korean" guards as allies of the Japanese, or the treachery of Jaavanese natives. Overall, the book was a very moving experience, and I would recommend it to any casual or serious WWI history fan.
A good read.
The story tells of the brave men aboard the USS Houston who were caught up in one of the early battles with the Japanese navy near Java. The enemy had the momentum and it was not long before the Houston was sunk and the survivors thrown into the sea. Hornfischer's description of the battle is so detailed you'll feel as if you are right along side our men as they fought their last best effort.
This is only the beginning of a long, three year account of capture and imprisonment for men who did not die as the Houston went down. Those survivor's stories of bravery, determination and courage are almost impossible to believe. How could anyone continue in these savage, merciless prison camps, enduring beatings, disease, lack of food and endless days of forced labor? Men were transferred from camp to camp, but many of them ended up on one of the most brutal endeavors of the war in this part of Asia...the building of the infamous Burma railway and the Bridge on the River Kwai.
The well known movie about the Bridge is a far cry from what really happened. As the author takes you through these day by day efforts, one can hardly believe a man could be pushed to this extreme.
Hornfischer has done a brilliant job of research, interviewing survivors, checking all available data and compiling a story that will rivet you from start to finish. These men were heroes and great Americans. Thank God many of them survived and thanks to this book their story will live on. You will not be disappointed in reading this one!!!
Top reviews from other countries
Whilst James Hornfischer's book can also be taken as an excellent "stand alone" book, because he does put what happened to the USS Houston into context, for a better understanding of the context I think that the starting point is "Rising Sun" by John Toland, followed by "Battle of the Java Sea" by David Thomas, followed by "Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston" by James Hornfischer, ... and in that order.
For me, all three books were "a gripping read", but for a yet more complete picture of what happened in the Far East in the earlier part of World War II, and, crucially for those already planning our defence with World War III in mind, books on the air war are also essential reading, ... but that is another story.
I am now going to read about Guadalcanal.
Prior to reading this book I have studied the Battle of Java Sea and the Battle of the Sunda Straights, the fall of Singapore and what in parallel is similar sad history of defeat, the fate of Force Z (HMS Repulse and the POW) from a variety of sources as well as seeing for example the damage these two ships (Perth and Houston) took on their last hours first hand on the wrecks themselves. But sadly the book is let down by it's bias (which is the down side to a lot of narrative history) to America and the what is now rapidly becoming 'bad taste' American centric view of the USA supreme morality and 'good guy' of the world assumption. An assumption that come from within the USA but is often not shared outside.
This is a view that seems to stereotype the rest of the nationalities involved (in this case) in the Pacific war as lesser peoples who were blessed despite in defeat of which in this case was the result of the lesser peoples by the intervention of the USA. The British are arrogant gutless fools who can be blamed as the number one bad guys (a dark part of the American psyche which still seems to rear it's out dated head even in the 21st century), followed by the demonic Japanese who did as we all know (my great uncle was prisoner of the Japanese army) treat people horridly from a western perspective but are also shown to be an ugly weak and uncultured people something which again is simplistic and naive and no doubt offensive to most Japanese, then the foolish Dutch cowards, the cheerful but simple Australians, mates of kind but no match in war, sport or as comrades for the Americans and then last and so quickly dispatched with mild racism the 'natives' who we must assume are the Javanese. I am sure most Indonesian would consider their early independence movement as just a bunch of down trodden natives. Jakarta is not Batavia anymore and retains its Japanese name for a reason the Japanese occupation help to speed up Indonesia's independence.
This perspective is probably the result of the story being told from survivors of Houston and their views which is understandably and no one would want to question their bravery or suffering.
But sadly it not holistic and for non Americans it verges on offensive something which is not acceptable in the 21st century globalised world.
Which is the shame because it a important story and one that needs to be told. But next time I gaze upon the Perth 6 inch guns pointing towards surface frozen in their last firing moments I will not forgot the brave sailors that also met there fate that night. Lest we not forget HMAS Perth, HMS Exeter, HMNS De Ruyter, HMNS Java and the numerous other ships that were also sunk in then Dutch East Indies in those fateful days. A good history of the Houston but needs to be read with an awareness of the jaded an now moribund American centric view of modern history.