With a crash that seemed to rend the heavens, those twenty 12-inch shells "straddled" our ship, one making a square hit on our belt and the others striking the sea on either beam, and sending up vast columns of water that rose some 250 feet in the air, and fell like broken waterspouts upon our decks. We on the fire-control platform were drenched and found ourselves standing over our boottops in water.
But what of the Oklahoma? Had her guns been silent? Far from it.
As soon as the German columns straightened out after their turn to the eastward, Ensign Brown at the range-finder began to telephone the range to the fire-control station below decks. "Sixteen thousand five hundred yards; 16,200; 16,000; 15,500; 15,000" And looking over the rail, I noted that the center gun in No. 1 turret was lifting its muzzle. Then came
