I have just watched an American naval force repel a much larger Japanese fleet in one of the few modern naval battles which could be seen in its entirety from the bridge of a participating vessel. It was a four-hour daylight shelling which resembled a miniature Jutland in some of its aspects and set several records.

The experience has left me quite without descriptive adjectives but with a new respect for the men and equipment of the United States Navy.

I am the only newspaper correspondent aboard the American force.

The monotony of a protracted period at sea ended at dawn today with the repeated sounding of an alarm bell. On the ladder toward the signal bridge (I was aboard the flagship) a messenger stopped me.

"Commander Peter Harrison," he said, "told me to be sure you got up because this is the real thing."

The message was from Commander Peter Harrison, of Honolulu, Chief of Staff to Rear Admiral C. H. McMorris. My first look through field glasses showed three vessels on the horizon. They were specks topped with black smoke, obviously already in full retreat.

A lookout from topside reported that two of them were transports. Someone on the bridge beside me said "duck soup." I looked again and there were five instead of three. The lookout said three were destroyers, two transports.

I crossed the bridge to try to see the rest of our force coming up behind the flagship; and by the time I returned to my original position, the lookout was reporting still more vessels.

I lost count of the number of ships on the horizon. For a minute, it seemed as though they were all over the northern side of the sea. I picked on one to watch--a three-funnel vessel with high masts fore and aft.

I was still watching it when it began to blossom fire. A man somewhere back of me said, "Hell, there's two heavies and a light." There was what seemed a very long time and then there were six waterspouts just off our starboard.

The flagship batteries replied almost immediately, but the smoke around the Jap ships prevented me from seeing where our salvos were landing. I did not notice that the two transports, belching huge clouds of black smoke (they could have been coals burners) were disappearing rapidly. The line of black warships--- my three-stacker turned out to be a light cruiser---covered the whole horizon, their gun flashes like the lights on a busy telephone switchboard.

A Jap shell exploded near by. The bridge of the flagship jumped. An extra tin hat rolled across the deck and the door to the chart house, half open, slammed into the shoulders of a signalman standing next to me. The man, unhurt, tried vainly to close it again, found it jammed, finally forced it shut.

The heavy cruiser behind us was dodgin shells. The flagship was almost out of range, but the second cruiser was in the midst of almost constant waterspouts. A few of them straddled her neatly. Others burst off her bow. When one pattern of shells landed ahead of her and to starboard, her captain turned her sharply. By the time the Jap gunners had corrected their range for the next salvo, the cruiser wasn't there.

Admiral McMorris, hands jammed in the pockets of his parka, said, "Order two destroyers to lay a smoke screen."

The destroyers seemed almost to turn on a pivot. Lt. Commander A. A. (Bull) Ovrum, pointed at the leading Jap ship.

"That cruiser's afire,' he said. "look at him."

The Jap was dropping back. Course changes for the American forces were being ordered fast. I stopped trying to keep track of our direction. I was not conscious of the fact that we were again closing with the Jap fleet rather than running away until the dry voice of the flagship captain, addressing the admiral, asked permission to open fire on the nearest Jap vessel. It was my old friend the three-stacker, out all by herself on the end of the Jap firing line.

The flagship's batteries opened immediately, shaking the ship.

Admiral McMorris, his lips hardly moving, said, "Order three destroyers to make a torpedo attach."

An aide said, "Aye, aye," No one else on the bridge said anything at all. Not then, not when the three little destroyers--they look big in the harbor but terribly small in battle--turned away from us and back toward that Japanese fleet coming relentlessly toward us just beyond the criss-crossed pail of smoke that hid our second cruiser.