Sentinels of Fire by P.T. Deuterman

This is a novel that will appeal to readers interested in the WWII Pacific theater. The setting is Okinawa, 1945. Although the characters are mostly fictional, the events are very real. The action takes place on a picket line of sixteen radar-equipped destroyers positioned around Okinawa. They are there to warn the Allies of the approach of Japanese kamikaze planes. Sentinels of Fire is the story of a particular destroyer, the USS Malloy. Connie Miles, new chief executive officer, tells it. But although the focus is on the Malloy, it is also the story of the havoc reeked by kamikaze attacks on picket ships and men.

During Miles first interview with Malloy’s Captain Pudge Tallmadge, he learns about the unique challenges presented by the kamikazes. It’s the difference between fighting an enemy who wants to survive and one who intends to complete his mission by dying.

… It’s one thing to defend against a plane trying to bomb or torpedo a moving ship. Quite another when the plane is the bomb.

The first Allied landing took place on Kerama Retto in March of 1945, a small cluster of islands west of the southern tip of Okinawa. This area became an important fleet supply and repair facility for the operations of the main invasion force. The April 1st invasion of Okinawa brought hundreds of ships with men, munitions, and supplies for the campaign. The picket line would provide a crucial 15 to 20 minutes warning to Kerama Retto, Okinawa, and the fleet of capital ships.

A typical picket station had one or two destroyers supported by two landing ships for additional AA firepower and combat air patrols (CAPs), when the carrier-based planes were not occupied elsewhere and out of range. Each picket station was assigned a specific area of ocean to patrol. The destroyers were forbidden to deviate from their route to aid another station under attack, or seek aid from one when attacked. Their job was to warn, and survive.

The reader follows the Malloy and her emotionally exhausted captain through a series of harrowing kamikaze attacks. When Captain Tallmadge is no longer able to endure the pressure of almost constant combat, the responsibilities of command fall to Miles. The rest of the story line is pretty predictable. Miles, of course, acquits himself honorably as all heroes are required to do.

But the author’s account of life on the picket line is more engrossing than the story line. Readers may think they know about the invasion of Okinawa, as did this reviewer, but the details of the picket line were new to me. In any case, seventy years later, few know about it except, perhaps, those with a survivor in their family history. Assuming, of course, it was spoken of at all. Deutermann reveals that his father was a division commander (commodore) at Okinawa in 1945, but he learned nothing of the picket line from him. “He wouldn’t speak of it. It was simply that bad.”

In the final chapter of Sentinels of Fire, the author creates a confrontation between a wounded, angry, and resentful Miles and the legendary Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, fleet commander in the South Pacific.

In the dialogue, Miles objects to being “tethered to one spot like that.” Forbidden mutual support from other picket stations, he said, “we’re sitting ducks. Once the Japanese figured out the line attack, we became dead ducks.” (A line attack consisted of multiple kamikaze planes attacking single targets at one time.)

Halsey justifies the hated orders.

“Carriers will bring the war to the Japanese homeland. Carriers and long-range bombers …The picket line gives us fifteen minutes more warning than we can get on our own. In fifteen minutes we can double the number of fleet CAP in the air, but only if the fighters are already up on the flight deck, armed, fueled and ready. The fifteen minutes we get from you guys is the difference between a sky full of defensive CAP and a sea full of burning carriers.”

Halsey also explains why more destroyers were not deployed to help the stressed out destroyers. Because of the deadly effectiveness of the kamikaze line attack, the fleet needed all its destroyers “to make a crowd of concentric circles around the carriers…” It was the only way to shoot down as many attackers as possible before they reached their targets en masse.

In Sentinels of Fire, as on the picket line around Okinawa, the destroyers were expendable.

Although the author does not say so, the story of the embattled Malloy appears to be based upon the real USS Laffey, nicknamed, “the ship that would not die,” for having survived six kamikaze attacks and four bomb hits.

A fellow reader criticized Deutermann’s book as “just one attack after another.” This reviewer does not agree: the repeated accounts are necessary to fully convey the horrific toll on ships and the lonely valor of crews. It required a skilled writer to bring them both to life. And when it comes to writing gripping U.S. Navy stories, this author has few peers.

Deutermann also had another message to convey. The ferocity with which the kamikaze pilots attacked and died, an estimated five thousand of them, was a prelude to what was expected if the Allies invaded the Japanese homeland. The U.S. Navy lost more men and ships during the Battle of Okinawa than any other single battle in history, including Pearl Harbor. It took eighty-three days to secure the island from a Japanese military desperate to slow the Allied advance.

In a note at the end of the book, the author observes:

The B-29 campaign and the atomic bombs marked a shift in the Pacific war strategy, with bloody amphibious assaults being replaced whenever possible by machines and brand-new technologies. The Japanese high command knew they could not hold Okinawa, but they were determined to make the Americans bleed for it, and perhaps think twice about an invasion of the home islands. Ironically, I think they succeeded with that.

The popular narrative today is to castigate America for dropping atomic bombs on Japan. It occurs to this reviewer that there might be significantly fewer of the sack-cloth-and-ashes crowd had their grandfathers been among the casualties of an American invasion of Japan.