Barry K. Atkins, CO USS Melvin

On October 2^nd , 1944, a day after Melvin anchored in Seeadler Harbor on Manus Island, part of the Admiralties Chain located north of New Guinea, Commander Barry Atkins came onboard to take over command from Warner Edsall.  Edsall had skippered Melvin since commissioning; he was an aloof, by-the-books skipper who was a stickler for constant drills and, despite the Central Pacific’s withering heat and humidity, for ensuring the crew wearing proper uniforms. Atkins, a compact figure with an ice-blue, appraising gaze, was a Trade School graduate whose first wartime assignment was gunnery officer aboard Parrott, one of the four-stackers escaping to Australia ahead of the fall of Java. (One of the Parrott’s squadron mates was Alden, on which Ernest Evans served.)  Of more interest to Melvin’s crew was Atkins’ experience as a former PT Squadron CO in the Solomons and New Guinea. Ever since the fall of Corregidor the PTs’ exploits had built a near-mythic reputation among sailors throughout the fleet. The PTs’ reputation continued to grow on New Guinea, where PT squadrons supported MacArthur’s stream of power as it moved north towards the Philippines.

--Opening Shots
 

Robert “Red” Barth, USS Melvin
 Signalman 1^st Class

One of the seasoned crew members was Red Barth, a high spirited 1^st class signalman from Milwaukee. Though just 21, Red was already a four-year veteran. When the war began, Red was completing a year of duty on the ancient cruiser Milwaukee; he then served two more years in Navy Armed Guard gun crew contingents on Liberty Ships crossing the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

--Forming Up
 

H.B. (Burt) Bassett, USS Gambier Bay
XO, VC-10, Lieutenant, USNR, TBM Pilot

Already, in the days before and just after Pearl Harbor, a trickle of early, sometimes eager, sometimes wary recruits had shown up at the military’s door.  More than a year earlier, Henry Burt Bassett, a lean, courtly Floridian with solemn eyes, newly graduated from the University of Florida and selling industrial insurance in Southern Georgia, had run across his future while strolling in Monticello, FL.  “It was 1940. The war was brewing, of course, and I knew I’d be in it one way or another. Then I saw a big advertisement in front of the post office. It said ‘Be a Naval Aviator’, $235 a month or something like that. Seemed like a lot of money. Flying appealed to me, though I’d never been on more than a few local jitney flights, and the training was in Pensacola, not too far away. From then on it was a matter of waiting: taking the physical exam, of course, and then waiting for orders to report.”

--Citizen Sailors
 

William Brown, CO PT 493

The third round was a deadly one, recalled Bill Brown: “It hit just aft of the chart house and got most of us. It hurled Nick and me out of the cockpit and up against the ready room canopy.”  Ted Gurzynski saw that Billy Gaffney, the corpsman, had been thrown into the well of the boat. “Billy was standing right there at the rack when the shell hit. He was killed instantly, blown right out of his shoes. Just the way he stood there, that’s the way those shoes were. They didn’t even turn over.”  Anthony Tatarek, 493’s cook, stationed at the forward 20-millimeter, suffered an agonizing gut wound. Moaning forlornly, he died within minutes.

--Night in Surigao
 

Albert Brunelle, PT 493
Motor Machinist Mate 3^rd Class

Albert Brunelle’s Navy Cross citation reads in part: “For distinguishing himself by extraordinary heroism …as a member of the Crew of PT 493. … Brunelle was on watch in the engine room when Japanese 4.7" shells twice passed through his compartment. …[A] large hole was blown in the side of his ship below the water line. In utter disregard for his own personal safety, he took off his own life jacket and stuffed it into the hole in an attempt to stem the inrushing water. He made emergency repairs… which enabled the boat… to maintain its course and escape from the enemy. His magnificent efforts, under the severest of conditions undoubtedly saved the lives of those on board who survived the enemy shelling.”

--Epilogue
 

Donald Bujold, PT 127, Motor Machinist Mate 2^nd Class

Survival also required that the right men do the right jobs—regardless of rank or rate.  Though Don Bujold was one of the 127 boat’s motor machinist mates, his GQ station was at the stern 40-millimeter. “When they gave us the 40-millimeter, I knew the gunner’s mate assigned to it couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. I told Cady if I couldn’t shoot any better than him I’d turn in my ticket. He said ‘Okay, we’ll find out.’ So, they put a bunch of oil drums out in the water and the skipper maneuvered the boat while I tried to hit them. Now I’d shot a few rabbits and pheasants in my day back in Michigan. I had Jake training the gun for me while I handled elevation. I knew enough to fire on the up roll of the boat and I ended up hitting the drums pretty well. So Cady told me ‘The gun’s all yours’.”

--Opening Shots
 

William R. Campbell, Jr., USS Melvin
Ensign, USN

Bill Campbell, an ensign freshly graduated from Trade School, reported to Melvin just over a week before her departure from Manus. The last leg of his long journey out to the Pacific was a frigid ride in the belly of a B-26 bomber on a hop from New Guinea, and he arrived unceremoniously by climbing over Melvin’s fantail.

Campbell became one of Melvin’s assistant gunnery officers. On A-day plus two, as Melvin stood down from dawn GQ, Campbell climbed into the gunfire director basket to take over from Bill Robie for the first time. He was still taking a seat when a Japanese plane swooped down.  “I let myself in through the hatch and was putting on the headphones. The bridge alerted me to a Japanese aircraft, a Val, headed our way. I ducked down to acknowledge and at the same time felt Bill Robie beating on my helmet.”

Getting ready to climb off the basket as Bill Campbell took over, Bill Robie spotted the intruder.  “I saw the goddamn Val come up our stern. He didn’t fire anything as far as I could tell.”  Red Barth saw the same thing from the port bridge wing:  “Here came a damn Japanese plane skipping over the mountains—we never could pick him up. And he flew over us but nobody fired. I could have thrown a potato at him and hit him.”

--Crossings
 

George Carbon, USS Samuel B. Roberts, Seaman 1^st Class

George Carbon was Roberts’ forward mount trainer. “We were shooting at one of the heavy cruisers, firing maybe every five seconds. They tried to control us from the bridge, but the mount was jerking around so fast the shellman and powderman couldn’t stand up. Finally they let us go into manual control. My targets kept changing. The gun captain was standing above and right behind me. He would pick out the targets and kick me in the right or left shoulder to turn. I was really frustrated trying to get something in the sights. We were laying down a lot of smoke.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Verner Carlsen, Chaplain, USS Gambier Bay

Verner Carlsen, the married, 29-year-old pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Grettinger, IO, got a different kind of call. As war began and many of the young men in Verner’s congregation went off to enlist, train and go overseas, he spent much of his time keeping up a correspondence that grew more and more like the summons to a ministry. While he held off for as long as he felt he could—tending to the anxieties and fears of parishioners who had sent their boys off, and the deep anguish of those who would never see them return—the calling in Verner’s soul persisted. Finally, in 1943, Verner enlisted and received a commission in the Navy’s Chaplain Corps. Verner’s first stop on his new journey was the Virginia campus of venerable William & Mary College—eight weeks attending classes and running obstacle courses in the ranks of an unlikely regiment of ministers, priests and rabbis.

--Citizen Sailors
 

Terry Chambers, XO PT 491

At its widest point Surigao Strait separates Leyte and Dinagat Islands by 14 miles. The 490, 491 and 493 boats sat midstream and waited. These would be confining waters for the big ships poised upstream, but to the sailors on the three small PTs it was like sitting in the middle of nowhere. As the hours dragged, 491’s XO Terry Chambers felt both exposed and impatient. “The old military game of hurry up and wait. We eavesdropped on the VHF radio circuits—mostly ships’ gossip and a confusing stream of sightings.”

After midnight clouds from an electrical storm brewing to the south covered what had been bright moonlight and moved over the boats.  The clouds carried a squall and the crews prepared for a soaking.  Just before the rain hit, the tips of the gun barrels and antennas buzzed with St. Elmo’s fire; blue sparks and streamers of static electricity discharged into the heavy night air.

Terry remembered the Japanese ships coming in right behind the squall line. “I saw a lightning flash, and there they were in a column.”  491’s skipper Harley Thronson’s recollection had a different flavor. “The weather was miserable—really poor visibility. Suddenly we were in the middle of the Japanese formation. They turned on searchlights and opened fire.”

--Night in Surigao
 

Bobby Chastain, USS Johnston
Seaman 1^st Class

Aboard Johnston, Bobby Chastain, an 18-year-old seaman from landlocked Kansas, was the first to reach the number 4 mount. Still dopey from standing midwatch and dawn GQ, he couldn’t figure out why they were called back to battle stations. By the time Chastain had settled himself at the trainer’s station, Bob Hollenbaugh, mount 4’s gun captain, had arrived. “Bob told me we’d be firing under director control, so I began training the mount to match pointer readings from plot. Then I heard the mount’s squawk box:  ‘Japanese fleet fifteen miles astern.’”  

--Morning Off Samar
 

Marvin T. Childress, USS West Virginia, Seaman 1st Class

In the battleships’ main batteries—the 16-inch guns on Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Maryland and West Virginia, the 14-inch guns on California and Tennessee—gun house, handling room and magazine crews worked the vertical assembly lines that produced salvos. On West Virginia, Marvin Childress and the others in the after powder magazine jumped to work. “We brought the bags out—both AP and bombardment--and passed them down to the turret ring. Then we shoved the bags up the chute. The gun room grabbed them and we kept passing them until they told us to stop.”  

--Night in Surigao
 

Robert Clarkin, PT 152, Torpedoman 3^rd Class

To Bob Clarkin on the 152 boat, the next moments were a riotous blur. “The first thing I remembered was the boat hauling ass away.  We hadn’t fired torpedoes and we were caught in a searchlight. The noise was incredible.” Bob heard an explosion forward. “Charlie Midgett, the guy on the bow 37-millimeter gun was down. He looked pretty bad to me. He probably died right away.”  Fires flared topside and below decks. “Some of the guys carried Charlie and a couple of wounded down to the skipper’s cabin.  The mattresses in crew’s quarters were burning, so I went below, hauled them up and tossed them over the side.” By then, 152 was covered by screening smoke from the 130 boat, but incoming rounds still howled and splashed around them.  “The skipper signaled me to roll one of the stern depth charges.”  The charge exploded behind them. It was meant to fool the Japanese, but Bob doubted they’d even notice.

--Night in Surigao
 

Lawrence R. Collins, USS Midway/St. Lo, Ensign

Larry Collins, 29, one of St. Lo’s communications officers, was in the wardroom when the GQ alarm sounded. “My GQ station was near the fantail, and I usually got there through the hanger deck. But I guess the Lord steered me another way. I went up the same ladder, but instead of getting off at the hanger deck, I kept climbing to the gallery level. The Japanese plane hit while I was still climbing. I turned and ran forward. Explosions started coming one after another—maybe a half dozen of them, and each time the ship would shudder.”

--Divine Winds
 

Evan H. Crawforth USS Midway/St. Lo
Radio Technician 3^rd Class

When he heard the explosions, Holly Crawforth ran to a forward ladder leading to the hanger deck. Someone cautioned him: ‘Don’t go up.’  “I started to turn back but I just had to see.”  Holly glimpsed smoke and fire sweeping across the deck and a huge hole in the flight deck just behind the after elevator. He ducked back below, and took a roundabout series of passageways back to Radio 2.

Radio 2 was dark, but the strikers were still there. “I told them to get the hell out. We went over to Radar, which had a door opening onto the catwalk.” The door was jammed but they quickly unhinged it, tumbled out and ran forward along the starboard catwalk, away from the smoke and fire. Holly inhaled the acrid scent of exploded ordnance. After emerging unscratched from the morning’s ordeal, it was hard to believe they’d finally been hit

--Divine Winds
 

Emmett R. Crump, USS Albert W. Grant, Coxswain 1^st Class

Raymond Dupler, USS Melvin, Chief Yeoman

The three DDs fled northeast on courses to take them between Hibuson and Dinagat Islands.  Japanese gunfire reached out for them. To fire torpedoes, Barry Atkins had brought Melvin incrementally closer to the Japanese than either Remey or McGowan. Now he swung her hardest to port, pulling Melvin to the inside of the retreat track. “Barry K kept us zigzagging all the way out.” recalled Ray Dupler. “We made our smoke screen and funnel smoke, and the turns really spread out the smoke--first to one side and then the other. As we moved to the next leg, the Japanese shells went by, heading for where we’d just been.”

--Night in Surigao
 

Robert Durand, USS Richard P. Leary, Quartermaster 3^rd Class

It was clear to Leary quartermaster Bob Durand that Grant was in trouble. “She looked all shot to hell. We pulled up portside to and tied up. I went over because I had a signalman buddy on the Grant. He showed me what happened. One incoming round blasted the whaleboat, the ship’s doctor and a repair party into dust. My buddy put himself between the pilothouse and the mast. The walkway across the pilothouse was Swiss cheese except for the area where he was standing. It was a hellish mess--steel parts, body parts. She was down in the water with her freeboard almost gone.”

--Divine Winds
 

Larry Epping, USS Gambier Bay, Ensign

Often the ‘wonders’ left small campuses near their hometowns only to wind up at huge, fabled campuses a continent away.  Larry Epping, like many others, signed up for the Navy’s V-7 program, which allowed college undergrads to defer service until they received their degrees.  (V-7 was as much an accommodation for a military not quite ready to receive the volunteers as it was for the volunteers not quite ready to go.) Larry signed up in 1942 while still attending small Mount Angel College not far from his home in the foothills of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. After graduating in 1943, Larry—a laconic westerner who had never been further east than the prairies of North Dakota--received orders to report for training at Columbia University on New York City’s Morningside Heights. There, along with 800 other new Midshipmen, Larry drilled, marched and attended classes amid the sights, noise and rhythms of uptown Manhattan--a city bigger than belief.  “I was awed by just the size and activity of the city. But I was even more awed by my roommate who was kind of a learning genius and never had to crack a book of any kind. He ended up number two of three in the standings, even though he never seemed to read anything but magazines.”

--Citizen Sailors
 

Andrew Gavel, PT 194, Torpedoman 2^nd Class

194’s scrape with Kurita’s ships was another brief and chaotic encounter.  Andy Gavel, one of 194’s torpedomen, stood near the cockpit on the boat’s port side.  “We made a run and I just managed to drop a torpedo over the port side. The guys on the 37-millimeter were firing on one of the Japanese ships. Then, as we swerved, the star shells lit us up like daylight. Next thing I knew they got us with a 5-incher in the stern. Harold Jenkins, the pointer on the aft 40-millimeter, got hit. He was a cop from Philly, the oldest guy on the boat, 36 I think. The shell also knocked out two of our engines, so we only had one left.   We began putting out smoke. It seemed like they were peppering us with everything; quite a few people got shrapnel, but not me. With only one engine, we just had to wait it out. We couldn’t do anything more.”

--Night in Surigao
 

Samuel Goddess, PT 194, Radioman 2^nd Class

Sam Goddess, a radioman who jointed Ron 12’s 194 Boat after the action in Surigao, remembered the tedious, bittersweet process of destroying the 194 and other Ron 12 boats.  “By then the 194 had sustained a lot of hull damage. We had to take off equipment and electronics, guns, torpedoes, pretty much anything of value that could be used someplace else. Then the boats were towed out to the shallows. They torched the boats using gasoline and they burned to the waterline while we watched—a sad day.”

--Epilogue
 

Vincent N.  Goodrich, USS Samuel B. Roberts, Sonar Man 3^rd Class

Dick’s group soon encountered sharks. “We started to argue about what to do. Some guys wanted to use the yellow dye marker in our emergency kit to frighten them. Others shouted we needed to keep it we wanted to be spotted. Some guys kicked their feet to keep the sharks away. Others screamed that this was would just bring them closer.” Vince Goodrich was one of those who kicked—he was glad to be wearing shoes. “I remembered what my boot camp instructor told me: If you kept your shoes and got ashore you’d have shoes. When I had to kick one of the sharks away, I was glad I’d kept them on. I wasn’t ready to die.”

--Divine Winds
 

Louis (Lou) Gould (right), USS Samuel B. Roberts, Sonar Man 3^rd Class

Before Lou Gould jumped overboard, a shipmate had pressed some ammunition clips into his hands. “The guy was taking a Thompson submachine gun with him and wanted me to carry extra ammunition. Once I got in the water, I realized I couldn’t hold the clips and inflate my belt at the same time, so I ditched the clips. We joined up at the floater net, and I apologized to him for not bringing the clips. ‘That’s ok,’ he said. ‘I lost the gun.’’’

--Divine Winds
 

Theodore Gurzynski, PT 493, Motor Machinist Mate 2^nd Class

Roughly a quarter of the armed combatants bound for Point Fin were PTs. They were staged to arrive following A-day. The boats made the 1100 mile open-water voyage from their base at Mios Woendi Island, first traveling north to the Palau Islands and from there on a second leg west to the Philippines. Traveling in company with tenders, fleet tugs and supply barges, some of the boats were able to refuel at sea, while others spent portions of the crossing under tow by tug.  Ted Gurzynski, like many other men on the boats, began the journey without precisely knowing the destination. “Before we got underway, Bill Brown told us we were going into something big and to make out our wills. Just something basic, and then the lawyers would take care of it. Away we went; though we didn’t know officially until we were underway it would be Leyte.”

--Crossings
 

Richard Hamilton, PT 493
Third Boat Officer, Lieutenant (jg)

493’s crew, armed with submachine guns, carbines and pistols, set up a small defense perimeter on a stretch of beach separated from Panaon Island by a narrow channel. They did what they could to patch wounds, and sat to wait out the night.  The wounded were bleeding or limping or both, but most could get about.  The tip of third officer Dick Hamilton’s nose had been sheared off by one of the explosions. It was a wound no one envied—he looked like he had a clown’s nose--but it was not life threatening.

--Divine Winds
 

John Hanley, PT 127, Radioman 2^nd Class

The boats almost always patrolled at night, coming in close to shore expressly to shoot and be shot at—and sometimes even to rearm. “We hid caches of ammunition ashore,” recalled 127’s Don Bujold. “We would actually beach the boat and go ashore to rearm with ammunition we’d stashed away—.50s, 20s and even 40s.”  Jake Hanley had first been assigned to the 135, a boat which met its end stranded on a beach. “We lost the 135 up in New Britain in April. We chased some Japanese barges into a cove that was too small for us. When we turned hard left to get out, the surf caught us and we broached. Another boat got a line to us and started towing, but that boat began dragging bottom and had to back off.  We ended up scuttling the 135.”

--Opening Shots
 

Mel Harden, USS Samuel B. Roberts, Seaman 2^nd Class

Mel Harden, 17, a deck division seaman standing watch in Roberts’ forward 5-inch mount, was waiting to be relieved for chow.  “I was looking out the side hatch and saw puffs of flak over some masts off to the northwest. We thought it might be a Japanese snooper pestering one of the other escort groups.”  But as the target—a distant speck --flew closer, Mel and the others could see the plane was American. “That told me the masts must be Japanese ships.  We could see flashes from their guns, followed by booms and then colored splashes out on the surface”. Just like that Roberts’ crew was called back to GQ.  The forward mount crew climbed inside the gun house and buttoned up.

--Morning Off Samar
 

Edgar A. (Ed) Hawk, USS Melvin
Lieutenant, Medical Corps

The crew of Monssen’s squadron mate Melvin received the same news.Lieutenant Ed Hawk, Melvin’s meticulous, bespectacled medical officer, readied himself and his three pharmacist mates. The son of an Indiana physician who died when Ed was 16, Hawk graduated medical school in 1942 and joined the Navy following a brief civilian internship. He received his orders to the Melvin three months after serving stints as medical officer on APAs. “I was glad to finally be aboard a ship that could defend itself and even fight back.”

Most medical supplies, including sterile packs of instruments, dressings, splints and slings were stored in a small trunk on the main deck next to the starboard bulkhead. Ed carried his own knapsack with dressings and other supplies. Scattered around the ship were rigid metal litters, Thomas splints and medical kits containing dressings, slings, and other supplies that needed to be checked. Packets of morphine syrettes originally included in these kits were now carried by ship’s officers. “The syrettes had a way of disappearing when they were left unguarded.”

--Crossings
 

Charles G. Heinl, USS Gambier Bay, Seaman 2^nd Class

Larry Epping  saw order and outward calm on Gambier Bay’s bridge. “We were getting reports of colored shell splashes astern--splashes of four or five different colors, always landing closer.”  Nearby, Verner Carlsen, Gambier Bay’s chaplain, clutched an intercom microphone. “My job was to be a play-by-play announcer, giving the crew below decks an account of what was happening topside. It was difficult not to create panic with the shells coming in. I had to balance what I said with what I saw.” Werner’s nightly prayer for the crew called for a similar difficult balance. “I could never bring myself to pray for victory or deliverance from harm—and the skipper never asked me to. I could only pray for the strength to face whatever lay ahead for us with resolve.”   Meanwhile, Charlie Heinl, a seaman from Ohio assigned as an ammunition passer on one of the deck-level 20 millimeters, was questioning his own resolve: “I was on the port side catwalk and I stood out and watched a little bit. When the shells started coming in I decided if I was going to get killed I didn’t want to see it. So I stepped back in the ammo locker.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Robert Hollenbaugh, USS Johnston
Boatswains Mate, 1^st Class

Johnston emerged from the squall with speed up to 17 knots.  Power and hydraulics had returned to mount 5, but 3 and 4 were still out. Bob Hollenbaugh tried to gather his wits. “I jumped up on the gun captain’s platform and looked out the hatch. There was a twin 40 millimeter right between mount 3 and 4. Walt Howard was on the handlebar director used for the 40s. I shouted ‘You got communication with the gun director?’  He shouted back ‘Yeah!’  So I screamed ‘Ask him if we can fire in local control. We have no power.’ Three or four seconds later Walt hollered down ‘Permission granted!’”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Walter Kundis, PT 524, Gunner’s Mate 2^nd Class

In its New Guinea action reports, Ron 36’s 524 Boat logged the demolition of enemy freighters, luggers, landings barges, fuels depots and ammunition dumps. During one night patrol Bet-Me’s crew even managed to duel with a truck convoy. “We watched these trucks come by”, recalled Walt Kundis. “They had their headlights off. Still, we could see them every once in awhile when they turned them on.  We looked at our chart and figured out they would turn their lights on when they got ready to make a certain corner. So we waited. Soon enough, when one of them came around a curve, they turned their lights on and we shot them up.”

--Opening Shots
 

James Lischer, USS Gambier Bay
VC-10 FM-2 Pilot, Lieutenant (jg)

Jim Lischer ran for his standby Wildcat.  “I heard explosions astern. They were so loud and close I ducked under the Wildcat’s wing. Behind us Kalinin Bay was surrounded with shell splashed.” Jim’s plane captain, a boy even younger than he was, helped him into the cockpit. “The plane captain shouted ‘Good luck!’, and I shouted back: ‘Good luck to you! I think you’re going to need it more than me.’  I never saw that boy again.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Sam Lucas, USS Hoel, Seaman 1^st Class

Below on the fantail, Sam Lucas had two jobs.  First, turn on Hoel’s smoke generator—a cluster of four large cylinders connected to a valve and dispensing nozzle. Turning the valve caused the tanks’ chemicals to combine and the nozzle to belch a stream of white smoke. Next, secure the depth charges—big 600-pounders in two racks, one on either side of the smoke generator. “It felt like the noise was going to swallow me.  The ship must have already moved to flank speed—the fantail was shaking like it was going to come loose. I could see other ships beside us, like we were in a race.” Hoel’s 5-inch guns began firing.  Sam still heard the ‘Whop!  Whop!  Whop!’ of incoming rounds from the Japanese big guns.  He tried to pay attention to the job at hand—wiring the depth charges on safe to keep them from exploding if the ship went down.

--Morning Off Samar
 

Fred Mallgrave, USS Gambier Bay, Ensign

Traveling on the unscreened eastern wing of the formation, Gambier Bay had been taking a merciless pounding all the while. Ensign Fred Mallgrave, in charge of the after engine room, had been listening to Verner Carlson’s account when he got a desperate call from the forward engine room “They’d been hit and the room had started flooding. The engine was out of commission, they were about to abandon the space and wanted me to start the bilge pump.”

Then: “Wham. Here came a shell into our area and water right in after it. The shell pierced boiler number three’s casing and went into the generating tubes. I told the crew to kill the fire and secure the boiler. When that was done it was ‘Let’s get out of here!’"

--Morning Off Samar
 

Bill McClendon, USS Gambier Bay
Landing Signal Officer,  Lieutenant

Joe was finally cleared for another approach. By then, Bill McClendon recalled, “it was pretty damn black.” For night landings, fluorescent strips on Bill’s flight suit and hand paddles were illuminated by a portable black light. Bill extended and moved his black lit paddles, coaxing Joe to align his Wildcat for landing. “During landing approaches I looked at the aircraft’s flight attitude. I had a picture in my mind of how the aircraft ought to look—especially where its tail ought to be relative to the landing gear. The problem was that Joe had no flaps, and without flaps he was coming in pretty fast.”

--Opening Shots
 

Joe McGraw, USS Gambier Bay, VC-10 FM-2 Pilot, Ensign

The Zero turned on Joe. “The pilot jerked the Zero up on its nose, whipped the plane around and got it heading strait at me, firing his cannon.  It was the greatest turn in a fighter that I’d ever seen—or would ever see again.” Joe’s reflexes took over. “I rolled left and knife-edged him.”  The Zero’s cannon fire passed close but clean by Joe’s tail.

“We passed within feet of each other and I could see row after row of victory markings on the fuselage near the canopy. The pilot was an old hand.”  The Zero slammed into another hard turn and Joe turn too. “I got into the tightest turn I’d ever made.”

Joe surprised both himself and the Japanese pilot. “I got around as quickly as the Zero. I lined him up for a shot and got a burst into his engine.”  The two planes were again in close. The Zero’s engine quickly smoked and, just as quickly, the Zero pilot pulled up on his stick, trying to ram Joe’s plane. Joe’s 20-year-old eyes and instincts were on it. “I pulled my stick back and the Zero went by, just feet under me.”

--Divine Winds
 

Virgil (Mel) Melvin, USS Monssen
Gunner’s Mate 2^nd Class

Virgil Melvin, a 17-year-old farm boy from Hannibal, MO had dropped out of high school to begin an unpromising career of hustling pool and setting pins in a bowling alley for 3¢ a line.  Finally landing a WPA job, Virgil earned $16 a month wielding a star drill to manually bore holes in a concrete floor to mount machinery for a factory under construction.  A landlocked boy intrigued by the parade of passing ships on the Mississippi, Virgil (Mel to his friends) had thought about joining the Navy. His father, a farmer turned struggling factory worker and a World War I Navy veteran, had staunchly refused permission.  Mel’s dad had had his fill of war and its consequences. “He saw another one coming and wanted to keep me out of it.”  But, once he’d turned 18 Mel was free to make his own decisions; he quickly enlisted in the Navy.

--Citizen Sailors
 

William Mercer, USS Johnston, Seaman 1^st Class

“We saw our first shark about 3 p.m. on the first afternoon,” the Johnston’s Bill Mercer recalled. “It was a pretty big one about 100 yards from us, but coming closer. It swam along my side of the raft, and rolled as if it was going to hit someone. We pushed down on the shark to keep from being bitten. And it worked-- the shark didn't hit anyone and it seemed to scare him away. We had more shark attacks after dark, and this time several guys got bitten: one on both thighs, one in the back, one on his arm and shoulder and one in the kidneys. Two of them died.”

--Citizen Sailors
 

John Montgomery, USS California, Seaman 1^st Class

John hoisted a sea bag nearly his size—and weighing not much less than his 113 pounds--and struggled up the incline of California’s midships’ gangplank. As he stepped breathless onto California’s deck, an indignant chief petty officer in dress blues told Montgomery to get his sorry little ass back down. He’d walked onto the sacred, ceremonial quarterdeck—not the way a new and lowly seaman should ever dare to come onboard.  Instead, John was ordered forward where he would have to scale another, even more sharply inclining gangplank to the ship’s forecastle. For a few minutes, after wrestling his sea bag to the foot of the forward gangplank, John stood and tried to gather a new reserve of strength. Instead, he found himself filled with doubt he and his heavy gear would ever make it to the top. Just then John got welcome deliverance.  A woman ship fitter—herself waiting to go onboard—had seen his dilemma. This angel of strength, whose name John didn’t think to ask, heaved his sea bag in one swift motion across her trim shoulders and began striding up the gangplank. With a smile and a nod the angel motioned John to follow her.

--Citizen Sailors
 

Larry Morris, USS Hoel, Seaman 1^st Class, USNR

Larry Morris stayed near the crippled after 40 millimeter for a few minutes, but then climbed down to the main deck and made his way forward along the port side to the bow. “When I heard abandon ship I realized I was in a pretty elevated location and knew I ought to get back aft before jumping. But by then a quick jump into water made more sense and I went over the side.” Sam Lucas left from the fantail. “The stern was pretty low in the water. I just stepped over the side. Cruisers were pouring shells into us.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Dudley Moylan, USS Samuel B. Roberts, Ensign

Copeland ordered abandon ship a little after 9 a.m.  Dudley Moylan went to free the flotation net on the starboard side of the open bridge to throw it into the water. “I was unraveling the lines when one of the signalmen came up to me, shook by hand and said he hoped I’d make it. It surprised me. I was just trying to get the lines untangled and not thinking about what it meant.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Ralph E. Natali, USS Albert W. Grant, Gunner’s Mate 2^nd Class

Grant’s after 5-inch mounts had been firing under director control during escape. Ralph Natali , a 2^nd class gunner’s mate, was mount 5’s pointer.  “I heard Marvin Jones, the mount captain, shout ‘Standby!’ Then there was a big thump and the mount’s hydraulics went out.”  A gust of shrapnel swept through the gun house and Ralph  felt a buzz of heat spread across his back.

--Night in Surigao
 

Glenn Parkin, USS Hoel, Seaman 1^st Class

Below decks on Hoel, Glenn Parkin paused for a moment near his locker before heading for his GQ station in mount 2. He had been through this before.  “I just knew we were going to catch hell.  I took two packs of cigarettes and some matches from my locker.  I crunched in the corners of the packs and matches and stuffed them into two condoms I carried in my wallet. Then I tied the packages to my shirt pockets.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Edward Pfeifer, USS Albert W. Grant, Torpedo Officer, Lieutenant (jg)

At Grant’s torpedo mounts, crews laboring to match pointers were also changing speed settings. As target range decreased, the torpedoes could burn more fuel over a shorter distance—settings were ratcheted from slow to intermediate and finally to fast. On Grant’s bridge, Ed Pfeifer tweaked his firing solution.  “Jerry Marsh promised to tell me if target was a battleship, cruiser or destroyer. This meant changing the torpedoes’ depth setting—shallow for a cruiser or destroyer, deep for a battleship. But when it came time to fire, all Jerry kept saying was ‘Ed, it’s a big son of a bitch!’  To be safe, I left the depth at shallow.”  Ed began turning the five firing keys for the after mount’s tubes. The first key turned and the first fish was gone. But the second key broke in Ed’s hand; he ordered the after crew to fire the remaining four torpedoes by hand.

--Night in Surigao
 

Tony Potochniak, USS Gambier Bay
Aircraft Machinist Mate 3^rd Class

Tony Potochniak had left his duty station in a compartment just back of the after elevator and fled to the port catwalk moments before the first shell hit. “I had a premonition, grabbed my life jacket and got out.” The explosion that ripped Gambier Bay’s flight deck also destroyed Tony’s compartment. “I went down the catwalk to the parachute loft where they repacked the air crew parachutes. It was one of the first-aid stations and it was filling up with wounded. I was helping the flight surgeon when a shell came down through the flight deck. I saw a burst of flame. Shrapnel caught the doc right in the back of the neck and killed him right away--he just fell across the guy he was working on.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Richard Ralstin, USS McDermut
Motor Machinist Mate 2^nd Class

Ahead, on McDermut’s bridge, CO C.B. Jennings ordered up none of the small speed changes that infuriated the snipes and earned him the name ‘Jingle Bells’ Jennings.  Instead, McDermut plowed steadily through the dark, first at 20 knots and then at 25.  Below, on the main deck, starboard side, Motor Machinist Mate Dick Ralstin huddled with the rest of forward repair—a damage control party of deck and engineering rates.

The temperature topside was 80 degrees; bridge, torpedo and gun crews on the 40s and 20s caught the breeze stirred by the ships’ movement. Crews at interior battle stations got no relief behind dogged portholes and watertight doors, in the confines of CIC, radar and gun plot rooms, in the swelter of engineering spaces, standing, sitting or waiting in darkness or under the spectral glow of red battle lamps. 

--Night in Surigao
 

Robert Read, USS Richard P. Leary, Quartermaster 3^rd Class

Newcomb, Leary and Grant fired thirteen torpedoes in total. After Leary’s maneuvers to evade incoming torpedoes, all three DD’s headed west to parallel the course of the upstream battle line and prepared to turn northeast to escape —Newcomb still leading, followed by Leary and Grant. The ships rode under the arcs of projectiles from both sides.  On Leary’s bridge, Torpedo Officer Bill Harrington and Quartermaster Bob Read were timing the torpedo runs. “It was plenty noisy now. You could see the flashes from their guns and from ours. Someone’s shell flew right between the two stacks. A terrible sound, like a locomotive.”  Bob Durand recalled: “Lieutenant Harrington yelled ‘Now!’ With that there were two heavy explosions downrange.” Someone’s torpedoes, most likely Leary’s, had hit Yamashiro.  

--Night in Surigao
 

Lou Rice, USS Gambier Bay, Radarman 3^rd Class

Just below the bridge, in Gambier’s radar room, Lou Rice also stood midwatch. “I was on the air search—the SK radar.”  Lou, a Third Class Radarman from Columbus, Ohio, was a three-year Navy veteran. His first ship was the Henderson, a Marine troop transport that left Pearl Harbor just after midnight on 7 December 1941, and cleared the outer channel before the Japanese attack began. Lou joined Gambier during construction and wangled his way into radar training in San Diego before her commissioning. “Right around 2:30 a.m., maybe 2:45 I started getting these sharp pips. They were off at the end of the scope, but still very sharp. I called them in, and when I did I said ‘They’re acting like surface ships.’ So they started plotting them next door in CIC.”

The pips stayed visible on the scope and moved closer. After an hour or so the dead reckoning plot—a rectangle of Plexiglas on which radar target coordinates were recorded, connected and tracked—showed them following an erratic but unmistakable track. “Someone said: ’Well, we better tell the Skipper we got some good pips coming on.’ So the Skipper came to the bridge. I stayed on the radar and kept tracking. Then they got the recognition officer up. He thought they were ionized clouds. I remember the Skipper asking ‘Well, what does the radar operator say?’  They kept calling into me: ‘What do you say?’ Finally I told them: ‘I say they’re surface ships.’ ’’

--Crossings
 

William Robie, USS Melvin
Gunnery Officer, Lieutenant

Bill Robie watched helplessly as the attack unfolded: “The skipper somehow managed to slow the ship. The Val pilot pulled back his stick, skimmed over and missed us. His gunnery problem was developing too fast. He figured our original speed and Barry’s slowing the ship made the Val overshoot us.”  (On the bridge, Barry’s assessment was more circumspect: “It happened so quickly. I can’t remember if I gave an order or not.”)

--Crossings
 

Richard Roby, USS Gambier Bay
VC-10 FM-2 Pilot, Lieutenant

While Joe, Gene and their wingmen harassed the big ships, Dick Roby and three other FM-2 pilots worked over two of the Japanese destroyers little more than 10 miles away from Taffy 3’s ships. “We came in above a thin cloud layer. We could see them, but they couldn’t see us and they had no fire control radar. We fell on them in a 60 degree dive, almost vertical, and pulled out at 300 feet.  Every round in our wing guns was armor piercing and we aimed amidships, trying to get boilers and engine equipment. You could see the hits and the damage and they turned around.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Richard Rohde, USS Samuel B. Roberts
Radio Man 3^rd Class

Dick Rohde and Roberts’ Chief Radioman Tullio Serafini had left the darkened communications room next to CIC and were heading forward when the big blow came.  “The blast toppled us both,” Dick recalled. Dick struggled to his feet. Serafini’s shirtless torso was covered in blood. “I thought to myself: ‘how can he be standing there?’” Then Dick saw his own wound, a gash of blood, flesh and exposed muscle on his left leg. “I told myself ‘I am not going to look at it again.’”

--Morning Off Samar
 

John Ruddick, USS Melvin, Fireman 1^st Class

Melvin’s CO Barry Atkins had to race his ship into position.  “We were still patrolling the narrows between Hibuson and Dinagat. We were pretty far east, while Remey and McGowan  were running between Leyte and Hibuson. So, when word came to attack, I had to hurry just to catch up with the others as they went down the Strait.”  Ray Dupler, Melvin’s Chief Yeoman and Barry’s phone talker on the bridge, felt equal parts ‘ready to go’ and ‘ready to run’.  “As we went in I kept looking around, thinking: ‘If anything happens, which direction do I swim? Which island has the fewest Japanese?’”  Melvin’s CIC officer Brit Turner knew the details of the PT boats’ sightings and realized what was coming: “My birthday was the next day. I was 22 and I was wondering if I was going to see 23.”  On the fantail, John Ruddick, a 21-year-old snipe from West Texas assigned to the after repair party, waited with the simple confidence that seemed to mark his life: “That was a peculiar thing about me, I guess. I’d never been in a situation where I thought I wasn’t going to make it.  I figured if Melvin went down but its mast was poking up, I’d be the one holding it up."

--Night in Surigao
 

Gene Seitz, USS Gambier Bay, VC-10 FM-2 Pilot, Lieutenant

The echelon of four FM-2s circled over the cane fields, jagged ridges and caves of northern Saipan. Gene Seitz was division leader; Chuck Dugan flew on Gene’s wing; Dean Gilliatt, a Coral Sea veteran, led 2^nd section; Joe McGraw, the formation’s ‘tail end Charlie’, flew last, on Dean’s wing. “We were frustrated being on CAP. We wanted to have at ‘em. The closest we could get that day was circling over the island.”  Gene Seitz shared Joe’s frustration. “We all felt pumped up, saying to ourselves ‘Here come some tough customers.’ We wanted to draw first blood; we were ready to start the war. As far as we were concerned, because we’d just arrived, the war was just starting.

--Opening Shots
 

Tom Stevenson, USS Samuel B. Roberts, Lieutenant (jg)

One armor-piercing round punched a hole through Roberts’ hull near the waterline, crippling the forward fire room and dropping her speed to 17 knots. The explosion drove Tom Stevenson out of CIC: “Number 1 fireroom was right under us. All of a sudden our lights went out and steam and asbestos came up through the vents. We all ran out to the starboard side. Down on the main deck there were all these bodies. I thought ‘there’s nothing I can do down there.’”  Along with many others, Tom made his way to the bridge. “It got so crowded that Copeland was pleading with people to leave. I went aft to the starboard signal deck. As I did, we took a hit on the after end of the deck housing. It knocked everybody down. The flag bags next to me caught fire.”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Thomas Tenner, PT 127, Quartermaster 2^nd Class

Because the PT boats were so small (compared to just about any other armed craft), their weapons looked more conspicuous and potent than they might on bigger vessels. As the boats’ weaponry escalated, so did their crews’ cocky views of their crafts’ capabilities.  In Tom Tenner’s mind “There was no fear. We were afraid of nothing that moved. If something happened at night, we would come back disappointed if hadn’t seen it. If we saw light, any movement on the radar, anything, we would tear right into it.”   When Jack Cady, the 127 Boat’s new skipper, upped the ante by replacing its stern 20- millimeter with a two-man 40-millimeter gun, the crew’s swagger only increased:  “When the 40 was installed we thought we were a battleship. That was the way it was.”

--Opening Shots
 

Harley Thronson, PT 491, Lieutenant (jg) (later Lieutenant)

Harley gave the signal to launch torpedoes. “We were probably too far away.” As the fish made their runs, Terry saw the Japanese ships turn to starboard. “The torpedoes went down the side of them. By then we were running away and 8-inch shells were splashing all around us. One column of water hit the top of my helmet and jammed it down on my head. We chased shell splashes to avoid being hit. At one point Harley told me to turn hard right. He had his eye on one splash, but I saw a different one and turned left instead. If I hadn’t made that mistake we’d have been blown out of the water.”

--Divine Winds
 

Brinton E. Turner, USS Melvin, Lieutenant (jg)

Melvin’s CO Barry Atkins had to race his ship into position.  “We were still patrolling the narrows between Hibuson and Dinagat. We were pretty far east, while Remey  and McGowan  were running between Leyte and Hibuson. So, when word came to attack, I had to hurry just to catch up with the others as they went down the Strait.”  Ray Dupler, Melvin’s Chief Yeoman and Barry’s phone talker on the bridge, felt equal parts ‘ready to go’ and ‘ready to run’.  “As we went in I kept looking around, thinking: ‘If anything happens, which direction do I swim? Which island has the fewest Japanese?’”  Melvin’s CIC officer Brit Turner knew the details of the PT boats’ sightings and realized what was coming: “My birthday was the next day. I was 22 and I was wondering if I was going to see 23.” 

--Night in Surigao
 

Tom Van Brunt, USS Midway/St. Lo, VC-65 TBM Pilot, Lieutenant

VC-65’s Tom Van Brunt flew one of four TBMs launched from St. Lo. “It turned into a messy morning aloft: rain, low clouds, spots of real poor visibility. My wingman Bill Brooks took the northwest quadrant and I took the northeast. We hadn’t been airborne more than 15 minutes when Bill came on the net using our call sign. ‘Derby Base, Derby Base, contact, contact. I have the Japanese navy in sight.’  There was a pause and then a skeptical voice came back. ‘How do you know they’re Japanese?’  Bill’s response was slow, exasperated: ‘I can see the biggest damn red meatball flag flying from the biggest pagoda mast I ever saw! They’re shooting at me!’”

--Morning Off Samar
 

Bill Wilson, USS Samuel B. Roberts, Seaman 1^st Class

The damage from this biggest blow, two 14-inch shells from one of the battleships, was catastrophic. It ripped a 30-foot gash in Roberts’ port side near the waterline. From his station up forward, Bill Wilson could see the result. “Debris and steam exploded out the port side.”  Roberts’ after engine room was destroyed and her fuel tanks ruptured. Most crew below decks had been killed. A slick of black fuel oil surrounded Roberts. 

--Morning Off Samar

Leon Wolper, USS Richard P. Leary, Ship Fitter 3^rd Class

Leary’s Leon Wolper also went onboard as part of a small repair party. It was hard to comprehend the damage to a ship he’d worked with his own hands to construct back in Charleston, barely a year before. “Grant was in sinking condition. I remember vividly that the water was up to the hawser pipe. A carpenter’s mate and I went up forward. There was a lot of damage there. We stuffed mattresses into some of the biggest holes and then shored them with 4X4s. Then we went back aft to the crew quarters. There was nobody there, but there were some letters on the mattresses—last letters to loved ones I guess. We gave them to the ship’s officers.”

--Divine Winds