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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. 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, 1945 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'sraid.
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 rom 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.
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