Makassar Strait, Marblehead successfully maneuvered through three attacks. After the third, an enemy plane spiraled toward the cruiser, but her gunners shot it down. The next minute a fourth wave of seven bombers released bombs at Marblehead. Two were direct hits and a third a near miss close aboard the port bow causing severe underwater damage. Fires swept the ship as she listed to starboard and began to settle by the bow. Her rudder jammed, Marblehead, continuing to steam at full speed, circled to port. Her gunners kept firing, while damage control crews fought the fires and helped the wounded. By 1100, the fires were under control. Before noon the enemy planes departed, leaving the damaged cruiser with 15 dead or mortally wounded and 84 seriously injured. Marbleheads engineers soon released the rudder angle to 9° left, and at 12:55, she retired to Tjilatjap, steering by working the engines at varying speeds. She made Tjilatjap with a forward draft of , aft . Unable to be docked there, her worst leaks were repaired and she put to sea again on 13 February. Some of her wounded crew were taken off the ship to be cared for by Dr Corydon M. Wassell; he received the Navy Cross for protecting them from capture by the invading Japanese. When the ship left Tjilatjap it was on the first leg of a voyage of more than in search of complete repairs. Still steering with her engines, she made Trincomalee, Ceylon on 21 February. Repairs could not be made there or anywhere in India for several weeks, so Marblehead departed for South Africa on 2 March. After touching at Durban and Port Elizabeth, Marblehead arrived at Simonstown on 24 March. There she underwent extensive repairs and on 15 April, sailed for New York. Steaming via Recife, Brazil, she finally arrived in New York on 4 May, completing a journey of over from where she was damaged in action and immediately entered drydock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Atlantic, Mediterranean, 1942-1944 On 15 October, the rebuilt Marblehead again put to sea. Attached to the South Atlantic Force, she operated against the enemy in the South Atlantic from Recife and Bahia, Brazil, until February 1944. Returning to New York on 20 February, she operated along the convoy lanes of the North Atlantic for the next five months. She then sailed for the Mediterranean. Arriving at Palermo on