My Life
in Review: Have I been Lucky or What?
My Life
in Review: Have I been Lucky or What?
A Pacific typhoon interrupted the air war the next week, bringing its own deadly destruction. It struck congested San Pedro Bay just at dusk, after an ominous calm. The mountainous waves and hundred-plus mile-an-hour winds sent the 430's anchor skittering along the sea bottom causing the ship to flounder dangerously close to the many other drifting vessels. We cut the anchor cable, started the engines trying to gain steerage-way so we could head out of the bay into the wider areas of Leyte Gulf. The ship plunged in and out of the water erratically making steering almost impossible. The rain came straight at us, hitting our faces like liquid tracer bullets. We put on wool face masks, gear for use in the frigid Aleutians, which had been mistakenly, now fortunately, included in our supplies.
Feelings of helplessness engulfed us far greater than any such feelings during the aerial bombings. The Senior Officer Present on the flagship, Henry T. Allen, announced the lifting of the blackout on the bridge radio but even with running lights on visibility approached zero. We lashed Joey Proteus, our forecastle gunner, to the bow railing with a phone to warn the bridge if we were getting close to another vessel. He saved us from ramming into a huge Liberty Ship. Heeding his timely warning, "Ship dead ahead!" we backed all engines full. The order did not take effect immediately in those angry waters but it did "brake" our forward motion so that the 430 was nearly stopped as it eased up against the side of that hulking vessel.
We all donned lifejackets. One of the sailors put on three and asked permission to jump overboard. No one would have survived more than one or two minutes in those turbulent seas. Bunks, dishes and any loose equipment ricocheted around the decks; sailors clung to the railings to keep from being washed overboard. The bridge radio carried disturbing news. An LCI rocket ship reported that the storm was detonating their ammunition. We could hear the explosions in the background as they made that plaintive announcement. The flagship requested the LCI captain to advise them of his ship's position. His response: "We're fifty miles from nowhere and going like hell. WheeeÉ!"
The storm raged through the night and into the next morning. By that time we had managed to reach more open water and daylight brought better visibility. We had avoided the fate of a number of ships which had been washed up on the beach and sustained considerable damage. We did lose our mast which broke off and came crashing down on the deck without hitting anyone. The typhoon's toll included the sinking of four destroyers caused by the wild waves filling their tunnels with water.
We all breathed prayers of thanks for the blessing of surviving the onslaught of a natural enemy more powerful and dangerous than our human foes, the Japanese, had been able to mount. During the height of the storm an amazing number of Bibles appeared, some in surprising hands. Perhaps this sudden religious fervor and reverential behavior could be called "typhoon religion" and serve as a twin term to "foxhole religion."
Now with our fallen mast we were sent to an LST which had been converted to a repair ship (a ships' tender) where we tied up with three other damaged LCIs—two on each side of the tender. There we were on a Sunday afternoon in early November when confronted by a new deadly phenomenon which was to add a new word to our wartime vocabulary—kamikaze. The Jap air attacks had resumed after the typhoon and because of our depleted air cover had become somewhat more effective. When enemy planes were directly overhead we all manned our battle stations; when they were in the vicinity but not overhead we operated under "Condition Red" with half of the crew on duty and half sacking out—four hours on, four hours off, a rigorous regimen in effect most of the time since the initial landing.
That Sunday we were operating under Condition Red. Before going off duty at 1200 (noon) I asked the gunner's mate who was coming on duty to start cleaning the guns, one by one. I hit the sack. About 1430 the sharp clanging of the signal for General Quarters sounded and those of us off duty bounded out to take our battle stations. As I came out of my cabin, steward's mate Gray stepped aside for me to ascend the ladder to the gun deck then followed me on his way to his battle station, #5 gun. As I reached the open deck I saw a Japanese fighter plane moving toward us several hundred yards off our starboard quarter. I continued up the next ladder to the bridge, looking back at the aircraft rapidly closing the intervening distance. Gray had rushed back to the #5 gun on the starboard corner, hunched into the shoulder straps and grabbed the firing mechanism only to find that the barrel was missing (being cleaned). The plane was almost upon us.
Gray swiveled around and spread-eagled on the deck. At that moment our forecastle gunner, Joey Proteus either hit the pilot or the steering mechanism of the Zero sending it into a twisting spin over our fantail across the dock of the LST repair ship, scraping the fantail of the LCI on the other side and crashing into the water. The crash exploded the bomb and created a shower of shrapnel which fell on the decks of the three ships. All personnel were frozen in crouched positions, seemingly mesmerized or perhaps just scared stiff. No one moved; no one spoke. Then Gray broke the spell. Slowly picking his six foot plus frame off the deck, brushing off the metallic fragments clinging to his skivvy shirt, our black from Muskogee drawled, "Things is gettin' serious."
Gray's remark triggered a wave of nervous laughter and we started to move about, assess the damage and figure out what had happened. We soon came to realize that the Jap pilot was on a suicide mission determined to crash his bomb-laden plane into the tender (thus destroying the repair facilities for several ships). That conclusion was confirmed when we spied what had just happened some four hundred yards from us where another tender with four LCIs alongside had been hit amidships by a twin suicide plane, almost splitting the repair ship in two, inflicting heavy casualties and hurling many overboard. It was the first time we experienced—or even knew about—a kamikaze attack. We had become quite complacent about air raids with bombs splashing harmlessly in the water. That episode shattered our complacency. Now we had to face the possibility that the pilots would steer their payloads all the way to the target if they weren't shot down before reaching it. Yes, we learned the meaning of kamikaze that afternoon. In Japanese it means "divine wind"; to us it meant a diabolical instrument of terror and destruction. Thanks to Joey Proteus, our #1 gunner, we emerged from that encounter intact; thanks to Gray, our man from Muskogee we kept our sense of humor.
Shortly after the 430 got its new mast it got a new skipper. Captain Homer McGee, our Flotilla Commander, tapped Perry Hill for a position on the flotilla staff and Perry recommended me to be his successor. Jim Hartman became Executive Officer; Carl Lindahl remained as Engineering Officer; Ensign Robb became Communications Officer and Ensign Bob Sprout came aboard as Stores Officer. I welcomed the opportunity to be a skipper but felt the weight of the greater responsibilities. One of my prime objectives in that position was to maintain a close, supportive relationship with the crew. I never made a public pronouncement, but I vowed privately that I would make every effort to avoid holding Captain's Mast hearings and any other form of punitive disciplinary action. In the four months of my captaincy the 430 saw no Captain's Masts, although on one occasion such action might have been appropriate.
Several weeks after assuming command a pounding on my cabin door in the middle of the night woke me up from a sound sleep. I opened the door and was confronted by a charged-up member of the black gang, Machinist's Mate Hynes—charged up by a heavy infusion of "jungle juice." He launched an harangue on the allegation that I was not acting like a real skipper. "Hill was an S.O.B.," he bellowed, "But he never left any doubt about being a real skipper." Hynes was about the best man in our engine room, but he was an ugly drunk. I got a deckhand on duty to escort him to his sack only after he had spewed out enough venomous invective to warrant a charge of insubordination. When he came to my cabin the next morning, at my request, he was cold sober and contrite. I told him that I would not hold him responsible for his alcohol-generated outburst but if ever there was a second time I would have no alternative. In the days that followed he showed his appreciation in both word and deed. As it turned out that incident resulted in a new, firm mutual respect. During the rest of my tenure as Captain I encountered no behavior that even approached warranting disciplinary action.
Soon after my elevation to skipper Captain McGee assigned the 430 to deliver some personnel to a Philippine village about fifty miles up the coast of Samar—a solo mission. The orders indicated that one fighter plane would constitute our air cover. We cruised several miles off the coast which was still occupied by Jap troops but we encountered no enemy activity. When we arrived the Mayor of the village came aboard to greet us. A diminutive Filipino in a resplendent linen suit, he seemed less than a commanding figure because he was barefooted. Although nothing momentous happened the event sticks in my memory since it was one of the few occasions when we operated as a completely independent unit for several days. We were proud to be selected for a solo mission and pleased to be treated as representatives of the U.S. liberation forces by the grateful officials of that village.
In January our participation in the landings at Nasugbu landings provided the most serious test of my decision-making responsibility as Captain. The assault on Nasugbu, Luzon was part of the final phase of the campaign to re-take Manila. The successful landings at Lingayen Gulf, a few weeks earlier, had placed a large force north of Manila. They were fighting their way down to the Capital city. Our operation plan called for disembarking troops on the Nagsugbu peninsula a few miles south of Manila while paratroopers dropped behind the beach. The combined forces would then form half of a pincers movement closing in on the city from below while the contingents from Langayen squeezed the Jap defenders from above.
As our invasion convoy cruised off the Mindoro coast on the afternoon of "D minus 1" one of the LCIs developed engine trouble. We received orders to take the disabled vessel in tow. The execution of the towing procedure proved to be something of a nightmare. The cable broke twice during the hitching process. Nearly an hour passed before the tow was secured and we could resume forward motion. By that time the convoy had disappeared over the horizon. What to do? It was decision time and the decision had to be mine. The decision resided in solving the problem of regaining our position in the convoy in time for the landing the next morning at 0600 without endangering the five hundred lives of the crews and troops on the two ships (the 430 and the vessel in tow). The only way to catch up was to take a shortcut. The operation plan called for the convoy to travel NNW until 0100 on D-day, then make a sharp turn and head directly for the beach at Nasugbu. By heading NNE we could probably intercept the convoy about 0400. We would be taking a route fairly close to the shore and without any escort protection. Furthermore, moving into a crowded convoy on a moonless night under blackout conditions and crossing two columns with a ship in tow carried the risk of a possible collision.
I didn't sweat out the decision, rather I made the decision quickly—and then sweated. At a little after 0400 we reached the path of the convoy and started to cross between the vessels in the two nearer columns to take our assigned position in the starboard column (actually it was very difficult to tell which column a particular ship was in). The process of sliding between ships cruising in close order and hauling the ship in tow clear before the next convoy vessel reached the point of crossing was hairy indeed. Three possibilities haunted us: (1) a broadside collision between an oncoming vessel and the 430; (2) an oncoming vessel cutting the tow cable; (3) an oncoming vessel hitting the ship in tow. At one point the first possibility loomed. We stopped just in time for that ship to pass by, then applied full power to get across before the next vessel came along. We just made it and, at first light, moved into our assigned slot. When we neared the beach we disconnected the cable and the ship in tow glided alongside winding up well off the beach but able to release its stern anchor. It discharged its troops in water up to their armpits but since the landing was unopposed the troops waded into the beach without a casualty. Sometime later the repairs on the crippled ship were completed and it was able to leave the landing area belatedly under its own power.
The next day we received a message from The Task Force Commander requesting a full report. I replied with as honest and complete description as I could muster. It must have been satisfactory because that ended the correspondence on the matter.
In retrospect I believe that my performance might have merited an "A" for decisiveness but considerably less for careful judgment. I should not have tried to get into position before daylight. The risk was too great and luck as well as some fair navigating and quick maneuvering played a critical role in the favorable outcome. Next to the kamikaze attack it was the closest the 430 came to disaster. In this case the, responsibility would have been mine. Even now I shudder to think about it.
Possible disaster brushed by me one other time while I was skipper of the 430. On that occasion the only victim would have been yours truly and the situation had nothing to do with enemy action or operational strategies. It occurred after the 430 had returned to San Pedro Bay where our flotilla anchored to await further orders. Since the small ships had undergone a lengthy period without diversion Captain McGee arranged for a series of movie excursions to the Seventh Amphibious Force flagship, the Henry T. Allen. One rainy evening I accompanied the group from the 430 as well as contingents from other LCIs to the flagship where we watched a Western horse opera. When we boarded the motor launch taking us back to our respective vessels the coxswain in charge asked me, the only captain aboard, to guide him to the several ships since I knew the anchorage pattern, Thus the 430 became the last stop. The launch pulled alongside and the crew members disembarked via the rope ladder. The sailor on the launch who was handling the bow line thought that the unloading of personnel was completed and cast off the bow line just as I had stepped forward and was about to grab the boarding ladder. With the release of the bow line the launch veered away from our ship creating a yawning space between launch and ladder. I plunged into the water. Weighted down with heavy jungle boots, and foul weather gear my body dropped fifteen feet below the surface before I could reverse its direction. My mental reaction was two-fold: (1) I thought, "What an ignominious way to go. LCI captain lost while returning from a movie." (2) I must not come up too soon and be sucked into the launch's screw (we had heard about such an incident a few days before). That fear proved to be groundless. By the time I had surfaced the current had carried me at least fifty yards from the ship.
The problem then became that of summoning enough strength to make headway against the current and to get close enough to the 430 to reach a lifeline. Needless to say I made it. The only damage sustained was the loss of my hat and a dent on my dignity (which was slight anyway!). On the plus side, it made me a full-fledged saltwater sailor, having undergone baptism by complete immersion. In an interesting twist Jim Hartman, the Exec, became the target of jokes about the incident because he had tried to throw me a line which was attached to a painting platform and I would have had to have been a flying fish to have reached it. This episode contained another plus. In later years when anyone asked me where I was in the war I could honestly say that I had been in the Pacific.
Click here to see a photo of an LCI(I) class ship like the 430 during an amphibious landing in the Pacific.
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