This is Jockel podcast number 330 with echo Charles and me jockel willing good evening echo good evening

A little after midnight on Thanksgiving

1943 while patrolling the black waters off Cape St George near New Guinea

Berks five ship wolf pack

Spotted a Japanese radar contact

Immediately and without permission

Burke radioed his squadron hold your hats boys. Here we go

Into the dark and into the enemy's guns Berks destroyers drop throttles to flank speed and launch torpedoes

Exploding two Japanese ships outright then wheeled the starboard

Like the parthene courses archers into the face of three more enemy ships that immediately tuck tail and fled in

The night long pursuit Berks dexaylers discharge and load their guns so fast and so long that many passed out in their turrets from the fumes and from sheer exhaustion

When Berks squadron finally returned to port

Set a time magazine reporter every ship in the roadstead turned up its search lights and every blue jacket in the fleet

Man the rails in tribute

It was Halsey said afterward the classic c-action of this war

For 13 months Berk commanded his destroyers like patented his tanks

To every order he invariably responded proceeding at 31 knots a

Boiler bursting pace said one historian that caught Admiral William bull haulsies attention who addressed the few his future

Dispatches to thirty one not Burke

The name stuck

In the last two years the war Burke was forced to give up command of his own squadron order to become chief of staff

To mark missioner a famous aircraft carrier admiral neither a pilot nor possessing any experience in aircraft carriers

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