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Had the battle line
guns been in local control, gun house crewmembers like John Montgomery would
have trained, sighted and fired the guns. As it was, the crews could only
brace themselves as firing keys were squeezed in gun plot rooms. Each
three-gun salvo actually was a stuttered sequence— simultaneous firing would
only throw off trajectories. Topside, the eruption of noise, smoke and
flaming gas from the gun muzzles was volcanic. Inside the gun houses the
noise was muffled: a ‘whoosh’—an immense whisper--followed by the lunging
hydraulic recoil of tree trunk-size barrels and breeches. Four levels down,
Marvin and the magazine crew heard very little. “We could feel a little
vibration, that’s about all. But we knew it was something big.”
(excerpt from
The Last Epic Naval Battle, Voices from Leyte Gulf)
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