Improving Fleet Profitability!
 

Pat’s story of Fast Carrier Task Force 58
 

In August of 1942, I turned seventeen years of age. I was not doing too well in school, so I decided that I would join the Navy and help our country win the war. The draft was calling up eighteen year olds and I wanted to avoid going into the Army. By enlisting I was able to select the service that I would serve in. I went through boot camp in San Diego, California, and was then sent to Bremerton, Washington, where I was assigned to the Escort Carrier Core. The Core was newly commissioned, having been converted from some other purpose, and after a shakedown cruise, we were ordered to the Atlantic Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia. One of the things I recall quite vividly is being literally prostrate on the deck of the ship with seasickness as we steamed from Bremerton to San Diego. We stopped in San Diego to load munitions, and then proceeded to pass through the Panama Canal. We had liberty at one end of the canal, but I do not recall the name of the city. After transiting the Panama Canal, we proceeded up the East Coast of the United States and arrived in Norfolk. After a few days in Norfolk, we departed to provide Escort duty to Convoys crossing the Atlantic headed for England.
 

I recall that it was July of 1943 when we made our first cruise out of Norfolk. Our primary duty was to hunt and destroy German submarines. We always had a search plane up in the air and other ships in our battle group had sonar to detect the submarines by their underwater sounds.

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After our first crossing of the Atlantic, we docked in Casablanca, Morocco. I remember seeing the French battleship, Jean Bartz, there in the harbor. It had been scuttled to keep it out of the hands of the Germans. I do not know whether or not we destroyed any German submarines or not. I was part of the deck force, which meant I had to keep the ship cleaned up and I spent a lot of time chipping and painting. I also spent a lot of time on watch. In fact, I wonder if my eye problems today are not connected to my standing watch and peering through binoculars at the very bright seas. You would be surprised at how bright the moon reflects off the sea at night.
 

Someone was standing watch twenty-four hours each day. But at night is when the German Submarines would surface and also meet up with the "Mother Sub" to be refueled and receive other supplies and mail. I recall at one point of rigging up a breeches buoy to transfer mail and other things as well as personnel from a destroyer to our carrier. I recall two instances when we transferred personnel from a destroyer to our ship. In both cases, they were prisoners of war, rescued after their submarine had been sunk. In one case, it appeared that their feet were bandaged as though they had been injured in some way. We returned these injured personnel as well as other Prisoners of War to Norfolk. On one cruise, we received on board the skipper of a German submarine, rescued after his submarine had been sunk. I happened to be handling some lines near where he came on board, and could not help but overhear the conversation between our Skipper and the German submarine Commander. Our skipper had found a man on our carrier who spoke German, but the German Submarine Skipper spoke perfect English, as he had gone to school in America. As they talked, the German was looking around, and I heard him say, "That is the plane that sunk me!" Our skipper replied, "Not that one, but one just like it!" When I heard that conversation, I thought to myself, "Man, I'm in a real war now."

On still another crossing, in New York, we loaded a bunch of barrage balloons and P-51 aircraft to deliver to England. The P-51s had their wings removed, so we were able to crowd a lot of them on board our ship. We delivered our cargo to Liverpool, England and were given liberty while docked there. This was my first experience with a monetary system other than dollars and cents. The British system of pounds and shillings seemed weird and difficult to understand. Another sailor on our ship had a one-pound note and before we docked, I traded him something for that one-pound note. I recall seeing a British sailor shortly after we went ashore, and telling a buddy of mine, "Let's ask this sailor to help us, he probably speaks English." I didn't realize that although the British speak English, they can be very difficult to understand because of their accent. The British sailor did volunteer to accompany us into a Pub, and stayed with us while I got my pound note changed into a handful of coins.

When we departed Liverpool, we cruised through the English Channel where the Invasion of Normandy was about to take place. I was on watch and had never seen so many ships in one place. I noticed another ship, a Navy Cruiser, sending us a message by visual code and then, all of a sudden, we were traveling at flank speed away from there. I guess someone had told our ship to get out of the area. We proceeded to Casablanca and had liberty there. We then came back to Norfolk and the newspapers were full of headlines about the Invasion of Normandy.

There were three other sailors on our crew from San Antonio. One of them was a yeoman and worked in the administration area. He told me he could get us all assigned to shore duty. But I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to be part of helping win the war by continuing as a sailor on a fighting ship.
 

I was subsequently assigned to The Bennington, also referred to as CV-20. She was commissioned on August 6, 1944, in the Brooklyn navy Yard and got underway on September 12, 1944 on her shakedown cruise. After completing our shakedown cruise to the Caribbean, we returned to Norfolk and then Bayonne, New Jersey for some rework of things discovered during our shakedown. Finally, in mid-December we departed from Norfolk and headed for the Pacific Theatre by way of the Panama Canal. We arrived in Christobal Harbor where half the crew had liberty, The following day , December 21, 1944 we passed through the Panama Canal and that night tied up in Balboa, Canal Zone, where the other half of the crew enjoyed liberty. In an interesting aside, I had now passed through the canal in both directions. A distinction that, I am told, very few sailors could say they had enjoyed.
 

The following day we started our run up the West coast, headed for San Diego. We arrived San Diego on December 29. Here we welcomed on board two Marine Air Squadrons with their complement of airplanes and men. After refueling and replenishing supplies and loading every square inch of available space with extra aircraft and other supplies, we departed San Diego on January 1, 1945. After an uneventful crossing to Hawaii, we docked at Pearl Harbor and spent about three weeks there. Everyone enjoyed liberty while tied up there, because we knew that our next cruise would be into combat. On January 29, 1945 we departed Pearl Harbor, headed west along with four other carriers and the battle cruiser Alaska.

We crossed the International Date Line on February 1 and 2, 1945. One week later we dropped anchor in the western Carolines where a tremendous fleet of ships was assembled. From there we headed for Japan as part of Fast Carrier Task Force 58. We would be carrying the war to Japan from a carrier, for the first time since Gen. Doolittle's raid.
 

On February 16, 1945, we were 80 miles off the Japanese coast where we launched our planes for their strike against Tokyo. We lost one airplane to enemy action over Tokyo. But the guns on our ship were never fired during this action. We then retired from the Tokyo area on February 18 and after refueling, our aircraft provided air support for the invasion of Iwo Jima.

Several times we steamed back to within 80 miles of Tokyo to send our planes to attack targets in or near Tokyo. We also provided air support for the invasion of Okinawa. This action went on for seventy days. I was part of a five-inch anti-aircraft gun crew. My job was "fuse setter" which I performed by keeping two indicators aligned by cranking two handles. This set the fuses in the five-inch shells so that they exploded in the vicinity of the enemy aircraft when we fired the gun at them. On one occasion, a Japanese fighter was attacking our ship and we kept firing at it but failed to hit it initially. After repeated attempts to shoot it down, it was almost ready to crash into the ship. All of a sudden, the airplane exploded as we made a direct hit on it. It was so close to our ship that we could feel the concussion and the heat from the blast as the fuel, bomb-load and five-inch shell all exploded at the same time.
 

From our position we could see the landing officer. He is the guy who directs the landings as we recovered aircraft after their missions were completed. Normally, the bombers were recovered first, and the fighters last. On one occasion, we saw a fighter get in line to land ahead of several bombers. As he would come in to land the Landing Officer would wave him off. The fighter pilot would go around again and be allowed back in line ahead of bombers waiting to land. But each time he would be waved off. Finally, the fighter plane ran out of gas and crashed in the Pacific almost directly below our gun position. We watched helplessly as the aircraft slowly sank. Of course, it was impossible for the carrier to stop to attempt recovery of the pilot. One of our gun crew cussed the Landing Officer and he just replied, "The bombers are to be landed first."
 

One of the objectives of Carrier Task Force 58, was to sink the Japanese Battleship Yamato. On April 7,1945 word was received that the last of Japan's big battlewagons was part of a large Japanese Naval Task Force headed toward us. Our aircraft were the first to attack and the Yamato was hit amidships by a 1000 pound bomb dropped by one of our bombers. The battleship was observed dead in the water and later sank after being hit by several more bombs dropped by aircraft from the Bennington and other carriers in the Task Force.

Shortly after the sinking of the Yamato, the Bennington struck and impaled a whale. The skipper finally had to stop the ship and back away from the whale to get it off the bow. The sharks really had a feast on the whale.
 

We had an encounter with a typhoon on June 6,1945 that buckled a 35 foot section of the flight deck of the carrier. We steamed into Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands where we anchored for twenty days while we underwent repairs to the damage caused by the typhoon.
 

After the repairs were complete, we resumed our place in Carrier Task Force 58, participating in more attacks on airfields and other targets on the Island of Honshu as well as attacking shipping and other targets of opportunity.

Finally, the war came to a swift end with the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japan. Our ship was honored to be included in the surrender signing in Tokyo Bay.
 

I am proud to have been in the Navy and can say that I enjoyed my more than three years spent in the service of my country during World War II.

Thanks for your service and for your story, Pat!

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Here is another Navy story!
 

The World War II Experiences of George Bomely

The Hartford Hornets were a group of men from the Hartford, Connecticut area who had enlisted in the United States Navy Aviation Cadet program in the late summer and early fall of 1942. I was a member of that group. A patriotic fervor gripped the country and the Hartford paper carried a picture of the group and gave the group a lot of publicity as part of that fervor. We were called to active duty on October 29, 1942 and were immediately sent to Pre-flight school at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After fourteen weeks there, during which time some of the Hartford Hornets washed out for different reasons, we were sent to primary flight training in various places. I was sent to Squantum, Massachusetts. This too was a fourteen-week program. From there I was sent to Pensacola, Florida for twelve weeks for advanced flight training. Upon completion of flight training at Pensacola we were presented with our pilot's wings and commissioned as Ensigns in the Naval Reserve. Some of us newly commissioned pilots then went to Opa Locka, Florida for transition into the F4F, Wildcat, one of the Navy's first line fighter aircraft. Upon completion of this training, it was off to Chicago for simulated carrier landing school. With a few days leave prior to my next assignment, my fiancé and I were married back home in Connecticut.

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My next assignment was to the Naval Air Station in San Diego, California. My new bride and I were fortunate to have first class train accommodations for the long ride from Hartford to San Diego where we rented a room in a rooming house where several military personnel awaited further orders. I was given orders to proceed to Seattle, Washington to become a member of a new Composite Squadron, VC 87, being newly activated at the Naval Air Station, Seattle. We trained at Arlington, Washington and then moved to Holtville, California where we spent more time in training.
 

Finally, at the end of September 1944, we transferred to our home ship the USS Salamaua, an escort carrier and departed almost immediately for the Western Pacific. Our last glimpse of the United States was on October 16, 1944. We stopped briefly in Pearl Harbor, but were ordered to proceed to Leyte Island in the Phillipines as the invasion of Leyte was on. On our way, we stopped briefly at Eniwtok Island and arrived at Ulithi Atoll.
 

One morning, shortly after arriving at Ulithi, an alert was signaled and pilots scrambled to man their planes. Due to some kind of mix-up, the aircraft on the catapult was launched before the engine was turning  

at full power and the aircraft ended up in the ocean. Thankfully, the pilot had only a cut lip, however an enlisted man standing on the wing of the aircraft, was killed. Our first introduction to combat occurred shortly after this when we were performing escort duty of ships between Kossel and Leyte. Several Japanese aircraft referred to as "Frances" attacked a formation of our aircraft. As they turned to attempt to escape, one of them was shot down by the guns of an LST.
 

November 25, 1944 was a momentous day in my life. My wife gave birth to our first child, a boy we named Roger. It was also Thanksgiving Day and the day I was promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant, Junior Grade. In addition, we were steaming out of the combat zone and headed for Manus in the Admiralty Islands. On the way we crossed the equator. No one on the Salamaua could claim membership in the Shellbacks, an honorary fraternity of sailors who have crossed the Equator, so we all had to undergo the indignities of being made members of that infamous group. The squadron was shore based for the next month at Ponam, and the Salamaua was anchored nearby in Seeadler Harbor. We spent Christmas in the hot equatorial heat of the Admiralties, but the Squadron was soon back aboard the Salamaua and we were steaming north on the third day of the New Year. We sailed through the Sulu Sea past Manila Bay into the Lingayen Gulf and we were in the midst of the war for which we had trained. It seemed that we were at General Quarters almost constantly. Our radar screens were almost never clear of enemy aircraft. We saw quite a few Kamikazi aircraft, many of them being shot down before they could reach the ships of the Task Force that were their targets. Several of our pilots were successful in shooting down Japanese aircraft, even though the squadron's main job was direct support of the invasion force. Our planes dumped a substantial tonnage of bombs and rockets on enemy positions.
 

On January 13th, shortly after 9:00 AM local time, the Salamaua was waiting her turn to take on fuel from an oiler. Seemingly, from out of nowhere, a kamikaze came hurtling almost straight down and crashed through the carrier's flight deck. The Japanese Kamikaze and the two bombs that it carried tore deeply into the bowels of the ship. It created a hole in the flight deck about sixteen feet by thirty-two feet. One of the bombs went completely through the ship and out the starboard side at the waterline, without detonating. The other bomb exploded near the top of the fuel tank, but thankfully did minimal damage except for

buckling several bulkheads. If the bomb had exploded just a few frames farther aft, it would have been right in the middle of the ships bomb storage area.
 

The ship was taking on water through the gaping twenty-inch hole left by the dud bomb and the aft engine room was flooded. The starboard engine was knocked out and steering was lost for a while.
 

The human cost was quite severe. Fifteen men were killed and eighty-eight were wounded. The attack on the Salamaua was the last successful Kamikaze attack in the Philippines.
 

The war was over for the Salamaua and the Squadron was reassigned to another escort carrier, the USS Marcus Island. We would spend some time ashore at Pityilu back in the Admiralties before embarking on the USS Barnes on February 11th. At Ulithi we transferred to the Marcus Island and began a rigorous training schedule that went on for about six weeks.
 

We finally departed for Okinawa on March 21st along with other escort carriers and a convoy of transports and support ships. From March 26th until April 5th our job was to fly in support of the invasion of Okinawa. This included combat air patrol, anti-submarine flights and other special jobs. One more Japanese aircraft was shot down by two of the pilots of our squadron. Then, on the afternoon of April 5th, while the Marcus Island was being rearmed, the 87th received some news that for many of its members was the biggest thrill of the whole tour. We were ordered to leave the Marcus Island in thirty minutes for the USS Wake Island. After our goodbyes we boarded the Wake Island and headed Southeastward. We were headed home!
 

We rode the Wake Island to Guam where we spent a brief period and then boarded the USS Sitkoh Bay for Pearl Harbor and the United States. For us the war was over.
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George, thank you sincerely for serving and thank you for sharing your Memories.
 

Webmaster comment: George has been a neighbor of mine for some years. It has been an honor to get to know him, and I will always remember him as long as I live. Due to the recent loss of his wife Helen (2003), and his own health, George is moving to Connecticut to be nearer his family. With another neighbor, we visited George before he moved. His son told us a moving story I want to share. George’s son and George’s little brother were visiting recently when the subject of this website came up. George’s son told his uncle about it and the uncle told his nephew how George had always been his hero, but had never told his nephew about his admiration until after hearing about our website. Now this is not to praise this site, but to demonstrate how important it is to talk to our Veterans about their experiences. You never know what will come out of the discussion, so please talk to a veteran every time you can! Of course, we would be honored to share the story here as well.

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We are honored to add stories from all Veterans, so if you have a story, contact Mike at info@icdyn.com.  Thanks and God Bless all our Veterans!

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