in disarray due to the accurate enemy gunfire and the threat posed by his superior torpedoes. The shell-damaged Exeter veered out of the Allied battle line; to cover her retirement, Alden and her sister ships laid smoke. After he had made one order to counterattack with torpedoes and canceled it, Rear Admiral Doorman again ordered the destroyers to counterattack. On Alden’s bridge, a man remarked: "I always knew these old four pipers would have to go in and save the day...". All within earshot laughed, and the comment broke the tension as the American destroyers, the oldest ships in the ABDA line, steered a course toward the Japanese and launched torpedoes from their starboard tubes at 1822. Then, following the movements of ahead, Alden reversed course and loosed her port "fish" at 1827. Aldens captain, Lieutenant Commander L. E. Coley, firmly believed that the American destroyers' attack saved Exeter from destruction at that time. Poor visibility and the increasing range soon ended that phase of the battle, and the Allied force retired, Japanese scoutplanes occasionally dropping flares above the Allied ships. At 1958, the cruiser column turned to westward where, before the night was over, De Ruyter and Java would be sunk, and Houston and Perth forced to flee. Alden and her sisters turned eastward, to retire independently toward Surabaya, their torpedo stocks exhausted. Entering the minefields at 2230, the American destroyermen anchored their ships at 0210 on 28 February. Alden remained there throughout the daylight hours. She fueled at Holland Pier and anchored in the harbor, where she observed two waves of enemy high-altitude bombers carry out raids that afternoon. That afternoon, Commander Coley noted carrier-type aircraft overhead, indicating that "enemy air activity" would soon be on the increase. "It seemed that our best chance of getting through to an allied base," Coley wrote later, "was to evade the enemy and trust to the reduced visibility of night to get out of range of enemy aircraft." Given permission to clear out as the noose around Java tightened, and to proceed to Exmouth Gulf, Australia, the four destroyers of DesDiv 58 sortied that night, clearing the minefield an hour before midnight on 28 February, their crews at general quarters. Alden and the others steamed as close to the Javan shore as they dared, hugging the coast, and turned, undetected, into Bali Strait. There, however, they soon encountered the Bali Attack