The kamikaze strike on the USS Caine is the crisis in which Willie Keith moves from executive officer to the person effectively directing the ship’s survival. The attack turns an ordinary passage near Okinawa into a rapidly worsening emergency: Tom Keefer orders the guns to fire, then abandons ship as fires and explosions threaten the vessel. Keith stays, restores order, coordinates damage control, and brings the USS Caine through the immediate danger. The rescue that follows makes the reversal unmistakable: the captain returns from the water to find Keith still directing the ship.

Setting and Sudden Attack

The USS Caine was rounding the southern end of Okinawa on its way to Nakagusuku Wan to collect mail for the mine fleet. It was ten in the morning on a cloudy day, and no air-raid warning had been given. Keith was in the chart house marking bearings along the course line when the attack began. The ordinary work of navigation was interrupted by a sighting from the starboard side: a Japanese plane descending toward the ship.

Keefer had the conn, although he was not usually the ship’s handler. When the plane was spotted, he ordered the guns to fire. The ship’s 20-millimeter guns began firing at the same time, spontaneously rather than in response to his command. Keith dropped the tools he had been using and ran through the wheelhouse to the starboard wing. From there, he watched the aircraft continue its approach despite the gunfire. The crew could see that it was headed for the USS Caine, but there was no time to prevent the impact.

The attack reaches Keith first as an expectation of death. Crouched on the deck, he thinks of May Wynn and regrets having ended their relationship; the possibility that he will never see her again gives the moment a personal weight beyond the immediate danger to the ship. The plane struck amidships, followed by an explosion. Keith got up and saw smoke rising from behind the galley deckhouse. His private realization is immediately overtaken by the practical emergency: he told Keefer he would sound general quarters and go aft to assess the damage, then began issuing shipwide instructions.

Fire and the Abandon-Ship Order

Keith used the public-address system to announce the kamikaze hit and direct the crew to set the ship to emergency condition. He ordered fire-fighting and damage-control parties forward and aft, called for reports to the bridge, and instructed the crew to use the ship’s fire-suppression systems as needed. He also warned the gun crews to stand by the magazine flood valves without flooding the magazines until ordered. These instructions reflected the danger of the fires, but also the need to avoid turning an emergency response into a second crisis.

The situation grew more dangerous when an explosion sent flame from the fireroom. Keith found sailors working the fire main and urged them to keep fighting the fire rather than abandon ship. Further explosions followed on the galley deckhouse, where ammunition ignited and scattered. The engines stopped, and Keefer concluded that the ship was in danger of being lost. He tried to broadcast an order for all hands to abandon ship, but the public-address system was not working. The order was therefore not heard across the ship through the loudspeakers.

On the bridge, sailors began preparing to jump. Keefer came out of the wheelhouse and, seeing crew members going over the side, called for the rest to follow. Keith challenged his assessment: the men in the water were from the bridge, he said, not the main deck aft. Rather than join the abandonment, Keith asked to remain aboard with volunteers and try to control the fire. Keefer did not stop him, and went over the side himself. The captain’s departure left the ship’s survival to the officers and sailors who stayed.

Keith Takes Charge

After Keefer jumped, the bridge began clearing of smoke, and Keith could see that the ship had not moved far from where it was hit. The worst flames had been broken apart by the explosions, though fires and smoke remained. He looked out over the water and saw that only a portion of the crew had abandoned ship. The apparent scale of the emergency had not yet become the full loss of the vessel; that gap between the crew’s fear and the ship’s actual condition opened the way for a response.

Keith told Ensign Farrington that the USS Caine might still be saved. He directed Farrington to start the small Kohler engine and restore power to the public-address system. Once the system was working, Keith addressed the crew as executive officer. He explained that reports of damage had come only from the after fireroom, identified the ammunition explosions as the source of the blasts on the galley deckhouse, and repeated that the magazines must not be flooded without his order. He also gave the forward fireroom specific instructions to look for suction through the forward tanks, isolate damaged lines, and run pumps on the water entering the after fireroom.

The broadcast does more than pass technical directions. Keith asks the crew not to abandon ship, reminds them to remain calm and follow their drills, and argues that the USS Caine can still make harbor under its own power. He contrasts staying with the ship, which could mean an overhaul in the United States, with abandoning it and being sent into the personnel pool on Okinawa. Rather than relying on rank alone, he gives the crew an explanation of what is known, what remains uncertain, and what they should do next.

The ship’s condition changes through coordinated work rather than a single dramatic repair. Keith found sailors putting water and foam on the fire, others passing a hose into the fireroom, and crew members bailing out a charred boat. The earlier confusion had given way to organized labor around the damaged spaces. From the kamikaze impact until suction was regained, seventeen minutes elapsed. Keith then continued to direct the ship while separate problems emerged from the initial fire and damage.

Rescue and Aftermath

For the next hour, Keith maneuvered the USS Caine among the swimmers, stopping the propellers when necessary as he approached them. He kept making decisions as damage reports came in and new, smaller emergencies arose. When Keefer was brought back aboard, Keith had turned the conn over to Farrington and went to the sea ladder to help receive him. Keefer, who had left the ship believing it would not survive, asked how Keith had managed to save it and said he would recommend him for the Navy Cross. Keith’s immediate concern was whether Keefer felt well enough to take the conn; Keefer told him to continue the rescue and have a muster taken.

The search continued until the list of missing crew members had only one name remaining: Everett Harold Black, a water tender. A search party entered the flooded, gutted fireroom and found him. By noon, with the ship still lying in the waters where it had been struck, Keefer reported that everyone had been accounted for. The USS Caine had suffered serious damage, and the smell of burning remained aboard, but the central sequence of the emergency had ended without the ship being abandoned for good or the crew being lost.

Significance

The attack is a reversal of command in practice, though not a formal transfer of command. Keefer holds the conn when the plane arrives and initially issues the ship’s orders, but his decision to abandon ship removes him from the crisis at its decisive point. Keith, by contrast, remains aboard, distinguishes the danger from the panic surrounding it, and makes the USS Caine’s crew into a working damage-control party. The ship’s survival follows from that combination of judgment, communication, and coordinated labor.

The scene also gives concrete form to a change in Keith. Before impact, his thoughts turn to the relationship he had pushed out of mind; facing possible death makes his regret over May Wynn immediate and undeniable. Once the crisis demands action, however, he does not remain absorbed in that realization. He takes responsibility for the ship and the people still aboard, then directs the recovery of those in the water. The emotional recognition and the professional action occur within the same emergency, linking a private reassessment of his life to a public test of his capacity to lead.