King of the Cans

Captain Arleigh Albert Burke, U.S.N., had a new job: Chief of Staff of Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's superpowerful Task Force 58, and there was not a Navy man in the Pacific to say he did not deserve the job. At 42, the king of the "cans" had become a legend.

But destroyermen shook mournful heads nonetheless. They would see no more of the deeds of "31-Knot-Burke."

Husky, precise, wisecracking "Ollie" Burke was born on a ranch in Colorado, but his heart was in the Navy from the time he was able to walk. At Annapolis he had no time for athletics or midshipmen's monkey-business. As an officer he became one of the Navy's best at ordnance and gunnery.

When he took command of the destroyer Mugford in 1939, he trained its gunners to razor fineness, set a new destroyer shooting record, was marked as a great commander by the time he went back into the Bureau of Ordnance a year later. It was 1943 before he got back to sea duty. Then things began to happen.

Little Beavers. His command, a division of destroyers, was quickly raised to a squadron (two divisions). Most of his men and officers were green as grass. "Ollie"

Burke kidded and rawhided them into battle shape, turned his engines at 31 knots, dressed each ship with a new in-signe: the "Little Beaver," a character from Artist Fred Harman's comic strip Red Ryder.

The squadron's time came on Oct. 31, 1943 when it swept around the Solomons bastion at Bougainville (at 31 knots) whipped close inshore and shot up Jap airfields one after the other while Marines stormed ashore at Empress Augusta Bay. Near the end of the job a Jap task force turned up. Burke, who had made a 31-knot run to refuel, was back on the job. The Little Beavers led their task force in sinking a cruiser and four destroyers that day. Navymen had never seen anything like the fury and deadly precision of the Little Beavers' attack.

Thanksgiving in the Pacific. On Thanksgiving Day Burke piled into two Jap light cruisers and four destroyers between New Britain and New Ireland. "The first three sank before they knew what hit them," he reported later. Leaving one destroyer "to finish off the cripples, if there are any," 31-Knot-Burke chased the rest, sank a fourth ship. At 3:45 a.m. he told his captains over the T.B.S. (intership radio) to hold course until 4:15 "unless some of you guys think we should turn back."

Replied one destroyer captain: "Am low on fuel."

Cracked Burke: "We should refuel at Rabaul [the big Jap base], but I doubt if the fuel line connections would fit."

Said another captain: "I think I see New Britain over there."

Burke: "That's right, boy, it's over there."

Third captain: "Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours."

Fourth captain (sourly): "We hope that you, at least, will have more successful ones like this."

Burke: "I get it. Stand by to reverse course."

No Time for Slow-up. The Little Beavers plowed on at 31 knots. They steamed through narrow passages of the Solomons so often and so fast that Burke had to be warned to slow down there: his ships were washing the Army's waterside privies away as fast as they could be built. They shelled Buka and Kavieng, ranged west to the Bismarcks and beyond toward Truk. There was no slackening of their speed, no change in the quality of their shooting.

By the time Burke had moved on, the Little Beavers had sunk eleven Jap ships, damaged 20 more. They had lost none of their cans, had suffered little damage, almost no casualties. They had also written a new Navy book of tactics.

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