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Podcast: The U.S. Navy History Podcast
Episode: The First Battle of Balikpapan: Four Destroyers Raid a Burning Anchorage, January 1942
Description: The episode recounts the January 23–24, 1942 night raid at Balikpapan in the Dutch East Indies, seven weeks after Pearl Harbor, when Commander Paul Talbot led four aging Clemson-class destroyers (USS John D. Ford, Pope, Parrott, and Paul Jones) through the Makassar Strait toward burning Dutch-demolished oil facilities to attack a Japanese invasion convoy anchored off the coast. With no air cover, limited equipment, and unreliable Mark 15 torpedoes, the destroyers used the refinery fires for navigation and target silhouette, fired the first American surface-launched torpedoes of WWII against Japan, shifted to gunfire amid smoke and confusion, and withdrew before dawn with al...