WAR AT SEA: Charley Able to the Rescue

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Along the wedge of east coast battlefront jutting up towards Wonsan, Communists last week overran two key hills in a night attack. On the U.N. side, artillery was short and the South Korean infantry manning the position was in trouble. Offshore, the destroyer De Haven was on hand, but not much help. A Navy lieutenant in his gunfire spotting position ashore barked into his telephone: "Our artillery is so low that we'll be throwing C-rations at them unless we get a Charley Able [heavy cruiser] or at least another Dog Dog [destroyer]."

In the wintry waning moonlight, the skipper of the heavy cruiser Los Angeles, Captain Robert N. McFarlane, brought his ship about and within range parallel to the coast. From the naval post ashore came the map coordinates of the Red troops. In Lieut, Donald A. Marksheffel's main battery plotting room, seamen worked out range and meteorological data, fed it into a boxlike mechanical computer. The No. 3 gun turret swung around toward the target, its 8-in. muzzles rising slowly. Marksheffel dropped a hand, and a seaman pressed a warning buzzer three times with his left hand. With his right, he squeezed a pistol-like trigger, firing the first gun. The ship's crockery rattled as a 260-lb. shell hurtled over the mountain.

The cruiser's guns raked Hill 459, the valleys and road junctions around it, cutting the battlefield off from Red reinforcement. Meanwhile, in the light of the destroyer's star shells, the South Korean infantrymen cut down the attackers, dug in and held. At dawn the cruiser lifted its fire from the target hill, and hands on deck watched airplanes from the carrier Bon Homme Richard buzz inland to hit the enemy with napalm and rockets.

Before the cruiser's guns could cool, a call came in from the nearby 1st Marine Division. The Reds were directing mortar fire on the leathernecks from bunkers protected by 15 feet of earth and logs—too thick for the marines' artillery to penetrate. The Los Angeles had the answer: armor-piercing shells that plow through the bunkers, explode inside. From the loudspeaker above Lieut. Marksheffel's head came the metallic voice of the Marine spotter ashore: "Come left 200 yards . . ." Three more rounds. Again the metallic voice: "Well done. Direct hit on mortar position. End of mission."