Brooklyn (CL 40) - Naval Cruise Book

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-M three battleships, two carriers, two cruisers, 20 destroyers in the harbor when we got there. Put on all the clothes I owned and sat outside to see a movie. We happened to be moored in the same berth the HMS Prince of Wales was when Churchill and Roosevelt met. It was here I was qualified to stand a full officer of the deck watch in port or underway. Ialso was one of two officers that picked the right number out of a wardroom hat and got to make liberty in St. John's. We took the lucky 12 enlisted men and left the ship at 3:00 P.M. to catch a 4:15 P.M. train. The train didn't leave until 6:00 P.M. and.the gunner fthe other officer, he was in charge of the marines on the Brooklynl and I really fixed ourselves. We bought first class tickets because of our high opinion of ourselves. After standing back to let all the lesser folks on the poorly equipped train, we found there was no first class - never had been - and we had to stand and flop around for the better part of a seven hour, 80 mile ride. There were our sailors having a drink now and then and talking to the girl passengers while most of the other passengers read church pamphlets. We got there at 1:00 A.M. in freezing weather and with no lace to stay. Finally slept in Mrs. Kelly's house. We had, met a nurse named Phyllis on the tram and she had given us some phone numbers of other nurses. We finally got a room in the hotel, called the phone numbers and got dates for a formal dance at the Yacht Club that lasted most of the night. On a 7:00 A.M. train for a wild ride that took nine hours to get back through wind and heavy rain. So bad at Argentina that no boats could run, so with no food since the night before, we waited until 11:30 A boat got through the wind and we had a wet ride ac . Mr. Coleman, one of the Brooklyn's aviators, took me up in one of our airplanes for some bombing runs. After being here with all these ships for almost two weeks, we were ordered to Portland, Maine, and found the New Mexico, Yorktown, Savannah, Salamonie and Denebola there with lots of destroyers. That night had a message USS Kearney a destroyer, torpedoed south of Iceland with heavy loss of life. She was convoying British ships. Two dalys in Portland and off to Bermuda where we operate right around the island for awhile with no' long trips. A message that the USS Salanis, the tanker that fueled us a few weeks ago in Newfoundland, was hit by two torpedoes. The carrier, Wasp, and cruiser, Nashville, join us as the British carrier, Indomitable, and cruiser, Dispatch, left Bermuda. Message the U.S. destroyer Rubin James was sunk by torpedos off Newfoundland. Somethin was wrong with our turbine and we were standing by to leave for New York to have it fixed so no liberty. Then word came to stay here and try to fix it ourselves. Then were ordered into South Basin Drydock in Bermuda and we laugh. All the British ships are taking up the space in American dockyards and so we take British sgace. It was a tight squeeze to get in. We are the largest s ip ever to get in this drydock. Since we are in British base, the British extend us the hospitality of all their facilities including their wives. I mean we could dance with them at the Officers' Club. Made note of a typical but bad day on November 6. I worked all morning and stood watch all afternoon, then the Captain had very im ortant high priority secret messages for me to encode and, send. He wrote them, I typed them and he checked them and I encoded them. There was a bad mistake in one of them that he made and I didn't catch and I got holy hell. Then I had the midwatch and a commander came back from liberty with a little too much to drink and we had a fight on the deck. My relief overslept and I got no sleep at all. mber 11 is Armistice Day and we had British ne iiollfoard and after dinner ended up at the Royal gyasll-E Club and I was escorting Mrs. Waterfield, acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in Bermuda. She invited us to play tennis at the club in Sommerset and we played the next day before a gallery and drank tea afterwards. Was invited to her home, Casa Nina, on Saturday night, Made note on November 14 that I had been an ensign one year today. The captain decided to have a dparty that night and I was one of 10 officers to attend an entertain the British. Big dinner on board and here was Mrs. Waterfield again. We went to Malabar and danced all evening while her husband watched. The next day we went out in the morning and tested the shaft. Then a boat to Somerset and the Waterfield's party. I missed the last boat and had to stay in a 330 a day honeymoon cottage. Got up early the next morning and put on a bathing suit and went around to Casa Nina by way of the ocean - three and one-half miles over rocks and barbwire in my bare feet. The Waterfields were a bit surprised to see me again. We had a good day in the sun. I walked all the way back the same way I came and the lady at the honeymoon cottage only charged me a dollar for the cabin in honor of our war effort. I got the boat back to the Brooklyn. Never did see the Waterfields again. On December 4 I noted I had come on board the Brooklyn one year ago. We went out and in on gunnery practice etc. and this is how it was in beautiful Bermuda when the calendar read December 7, 1941. Over the radio flooded the messages. Japan had bombed and torpedoed the ships and shore stations at Pearl Harbor. We are at WAR. We listened to the news all night in between our aviators giving us very vivid description and diagrams of how it is impossible to drop a torpedo from a plane in Pearl Harbor and have it hit a ship. No sleep for awhile. The coding machine keeps us busy around the clock with messages and we also censor all incoming and outgoing mail on the ship. As the reports keep coming in we know there was a heavy loss of American lives. Many of our original 90 day wonders were on those ships. E. F. Evans, one of the nine to fly to the coast with us on. the United Airline plane when we graduated from the Illinois, went down on one of those big ships. The President officially declared war on Japan and so did England, Canada and a few other countries. We went into war-time conditions today. Darken ship at night and Condition 2 in the guns. The coding room is jammed with work and the mail censoring piles up. The Brooklyn has been scheduled for a two-month overhaul in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and everyone has his lans for leave. But .at 2:00 P.M. today we are ordered undler way with the Carrier Wasp and three destroyers to go to Martinique to capture or destroy any French ships that might try to get out. December 11 Germany declared war on us and Italy followed. We sank a Jap battleship in the Philippines - the Heruna, the news says. We are making 27 knots racing t0 Martinique. We know there are seven French ships there Including a carrier and two cruisers. We went to General Quarters on the word that action was probable and stayed until 10:00 P.M. when it appeared nothing was golllg to happen that night. Things! Were quiet in Martinique the next day and the French ships ooked like the were going to stay there- There. were submarines aroundv here but we hadn't seen any until Just before noon. The destroyer on the port bow had a contact and attacked with depth charges. Then an h0l1f later another destroyer contact and we sent our planes UP with 350 lbs. bombs. They saw the sub just below the

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about foot-deep mud. There is not a tree on th Iceland. When we got back to the ship, two of tllaevzllxglioi-E that fly the Brooklyn's catapulted spotting planes were making a report on how they were shot at by a British ship. After a brief investigation, the senior flyer was put under hack. Guess he was flying where he shouldn't have been. We learned that the convoy had sunk two and possibly three subs on the way over and four women were nurses and had been adrift 12 days with 12 men from a Norweigan ship torpedoed by a German sub. Five of us from the Brooklyn were invited to dinner at the King's Harbor Master's Wartime Residence with ten British officers that commanded the anti-aircraft batteries here on Iceland. The next morning six of us rode a destroyer down the fjord to Reykjavik. Seemed to me to be a nice old-fashion city with good looking, bashful people. Joe and I shopped a bit, swam in an indoor pool and then sun-bathed nude on the roof over the pool. We are just three degrees below the artic circle. We have frequent air-raid warnings, but no planes ever got near our ships. That night we entertained the British friends we had made on the Brooklyn and they were very happy with their presents of cigarettes, magazines and oranges. In the morning set the special sea detail, got underway down the fjord and out to join the formation. All ships except the tanker are going back with us and we are heading for Hampton Rhodes, Virginia. The battleship Idaho and three destroyers joined us and then the Orizaba had engine trouble and dropped way back. The Nashville and two destroyers came from the States with 200 bags of mail for the Brooklyn and passed them over to us via lines between the ships. My mail from home and friends was about what we would do when I came home this summer. They didn't know it would be awhile before I got there. The trip back was slowed by fog and for five days we couldn't see ships 600-1000 yards around us. Most of the time had trouble seeing the bow of the Brooklyn from the bridge. The mornin the fog went away we kicked up to 25 knots and headed for Norfolk. On Tuesday, July 22, we went into Norfolk passing the USS Wyoming, our apprentice seaman cruise ship, and the British HMS Illustrious which had been reported sunk, and alongside the dock ending successfully the first American convoy of World War II. CHAPTER 5 ATLANTIC-CARIBBEAN PATROL The Brooklyn was assigned to a task force made up of the aircraft carrier Yorktown and three destroyers to patrol the Atlantic from Bermuda to the Azores. Bermuda was our main base. This was a period of time when officers and men were coming and going in a steady stream of assignments to new jobs, ships and stations. In this short space of time, I had moved from the foot of the third table in the wardroom up to the second table with at least one third of the officers on board junior to me. I was assigned one junior officer' as Assistant Signal Officer and one to assist me in the coding room. We revised the communication staff to seven officers to handle the work three of us had done. The days are constantly hot as we go back and forth with the ship in Condition 3 and Baker with all hatches closed. General Quarters one hour before sunrise and sunset. The Yorktown makes constant launching and recovery of aircraft as they sweep the ocean in large areas around us. For each launching and recovery there is a course to head into the wind. The Brooklyn and destroyers are right with her with the necessary flag signals. Sometimes the Yorktown provides low bombing plane, towing targets for our 5-inch guns to have target practice. One day there was a simulated dive bombing and torpedo plane attack by the Yorktown on the Brooklyn. Frightening to say the least. You had to put out of your mind how you thought you could stand up to the real thing if it happened to us. The sunrises and sunsets are spectacular and we saw them all at .General Quarters. The sun, stars, and moon were all beautiful and we didn't have much to do but look at them. We would go into Bermuda and anchor off Hamilton. Liberty overnight except when we had watch. There were no tourists in Bermuda, just the local families and the ships of our task force when we came in. Got to know many of the families quite well, particularly those with daughters. Many nights would doze on a couch in someone's living room ready to make the 8:00 A.M. boat back to the ship in the morning. There were no automobiles and we had bicycles and sometimes rode the horse and buggy to our main gathering point, Elbow Beach. When out on maneuvers, we moved fast so the danger of submarines tracking and stalking us like a slow convoy is minimized. We had submarine sightings during these patrols either by the planes or destroyer screen and things really went into action - plane launching and flank speed, diepth charges by the destroyers, and bombs by diving p anes. On August 24 the number two shaft on the Brooklyn burned out and we were running on the other three. We had orders to go to New York for repair and the Yorktown was to drop off at Norfolk. There was a report of a German cruiser not 250 miles from us, so the Brooklyn put into Bermuda to fix the shaft. We were just starting on the shaft and getting ready to see a movie when we were ordered out again and started for Norfolk. At 11:00 P.M. we turned back for Bermuda. We sat in the Outer Harbor and the engineers worked on the shaft. The German cruiser was still around and it looked like we weren't going to New York where I had a five-day leave planned. At 5:30 A.M. the next morning we sat the special sea detail and sailed out headed towards Brazil in chase of the German cruiser. There are several other ships closing in on her also. We have orders to shoot on sight and our catapult planes go up with 500 lb. bombs when they patrol. I don't really like to put it this way because it's the taxpayers' money, but on September 1 when we were almost to South America, the chief of Naval operations decided the thin we had been hunting was the I-IIMIS Rodney so we turned around and headed for New or . I had my five-day leave and a visit with Louise, the girl that went with me to midshipman graduation in Pennsylvania. At dinner the first evening there, I had my first experience in trying to describe a war situation in the peaceful setting of a family dining room. See, as we approached New York that morning and went to General Quarters an hour before sunup, I was on the bridge and one of the lookouts yelled, Periscope. I looked up and there was a sub with a good part of its conning tower out of the water. We went to flank speed to dodge torpedos. Launched our two planes. They dropped bombs on something they saw. We picked up the planes and went on into New York. I took the train to Pennsylvania that afternoon and was sitting at dinner that evening. I started to tell what had happened that very morning just outside New York CRemember, we aren't at war yet.J and the people at the table looked at me like I was making things up - so I shut up. Two different worlds. Went back out on the Bermuda, West Africa Patrol with the Yorktown as soon as our repairs were complete, but on the return run, turned and ended up in Argentia, Newfoundland. Hot to cold and into blue uniforms. Found

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surface and hit it with three bombs and sunk it. We t and steamed through the huge oil slick that kept cdlrlmriiig up from the sinking sub. The entire officers and men of Sky forward and director control had watched a torpedo track go astern of the Brooklyn shortly before the planes hit the submarine. Beautiful hot day with low clouds and blue sky and water. We are on our way to Trinidad to fuel. One sub alarm in morning, but no results. We had a warm welcome in Trinidad because as we got there, a sub was trying to torpedo the HMS Indomitable and motor boats were laying a smoke screen across the harbor. We refueled fast and got out just after dark and went at flank speed for Martinique. Destroyer dropped eight depth char es on contact just as it was getting dark and we also haf a brief definite look at a periscope as it dove in the darkness. The Martinique question was officially settled today by conferences with Darlan and Petan. We are awaiting word to leave. There are definitely many submarines here and we would just as soon o. It took 48 hours to come, but it did and and we headed for New York fast. Admiral Kimmel was blamed for the Hawaiian attack and relieved as CINCUS by King. Try to go as fast as possible, but are held back a bit by destroyers who will run out of fuel if we go too fast. We get there and go into Gravesend Bay, New York, to discharge ammunition prior to going into Navy Yard. Were greeted with 118 bags of mail that had been trying to catch up with us. December 24 in a freezing storm we moved up the East River and into the Brooklyn Navy Yard to start our long awaited overhaul. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were quiet ones. For the second year in a row, I had the midwatch to welcome in the New Year. Had a few things to think about. One of the most adventurous and exciting, but also the most lonesome, year of my life. I figured we logged 43,800 miles of traveling on the Brooklyn. Wilson an Wakefield are gone to other ships and only three of our original five are eft. Friends have been killed in less than a month of declared war. What will happen when the war effort really gfoes intg action? A sincere wish to still be around next New ea.r's ve. CHAPTER 6 CASABLANCA - THE INVASION OF NORTH AFRICA The Brooklyn went back to the Bermuda Area Patrol after coming out of the yard, dodging torpedos and attacking subs, then was assigned as the leader of two highspeed convoys to England. The speed of the convoys reduce the sub threat because we could zig zag and change course during the night so it would only be chance if the subs happened to be where we were at dawn. They couldn't chase us and had to lay in wait for us to be able to get off any goapedos. During these trips, I was promoted to Lieutenant The main si nal on a trip like this with. big fast ships 1S the Zig Zag Plan. There are many variations and they are all given in secret book form to the captains of each ship at the convoy meeting prior to sailing. Underway the signal is sent by the flagshipnin this Case the Brooklyn, on what plan to use. Then ive minutes before each hour a si nal flag hoist is put up by the flagship telling whether to 11? keep zig zag going according to. same plan, f2l change to another designated plan, or 437 218 Zag Plans are made so you go to the left for an hour and then if the signal says to you go to the right for an hour or you go to the left again. We had been doing the left-right plan during the day putting up a signal every hour indicating this. I had some decoding to do and the communications officer took over my signal watch for awhile. When I.came back on the bridge, I know he turned over all. the instructions before I relieved him, but I was just thinking of something else, day dreaming and watching the ocean. All of.a sudden the officer of the deck yelled, Oh God, Captain, Captain Come Quick. It was 20 seconds after the hour and 24 big heavily loaded ships were going in every direction. For the five minutes before the hour they all had a different idea of what to do since there was no signal. Some said we have been alternating left and right so he means to keep alternating. Some said there is no signal so we keep zig zagging the way we have been. Some said no signal means no more zig zagging. And they all did their thing on the hour. How there Wasn't a collision of two or more ships I don't know, but I do know how I felt when the captain walked over to me after he got things straightened out and said, You didn't put up the signal did you? Everything we had done so far was warmup. We were getting ready for the main event - the invasion of North Africa. After extensive plans and preparation, we put to sea from Norfolk, Virginia, with the Savannah and Philadelphia plus four destroyers and waited for the 100 plus other ships that are going also. There is no secret on this trip. The plans were too extensive and the crew completely briefed. We are going to invade West Africa along the Northern Coast, take Morocco and then Algeria and Tunisia. Get Rommel from behind in Libya and push the Axis out of Africa. We face up to the fact that we are going into our first fight, but somehow the might we see around us is reassuring: 3 Battleships 5 Aircraft Carriers 8 Cruisers 45' Transports with over 100,000 men and equipment 36 Destroyers and Mine Sweepers 4 Tankers Our ship and all ships have been stri ped of everything that can burn. Even the paint has been scraped off the bulkheads, decks and rooms. Unlike anything else we did, the eyes of the world are on us because it rea ly isn't much of a secret. Even the radio and press were talking and writing about an attack on Casablanca. It was the 30th of October before we were all formed up and this is what it looked like. There are over 100 ships and this morning all are going to fuel from the tankers to be full at the start. We have some submarine alarms, but figure most of the subs are gathering over near Africa waiting for us. Sunday, November 8, is D. Day. The day the invasion begins. 0400,is H. hour, 4:00 A.M. On the last da of October, we were etting more sub alerts. Dropped ten depth charges the day before on contacts, two more last night, and now, today, every hour we can feel and hear more going off. Our best estimates have .a line of subs from the Azores to Cape Verde Islands. Thirty to forty subs are there. Radio re orts that Montgomery is smashing at Rommel in Libya. Also reports that no Axis aircraft in the area of East Africa for the past few days. Maybe they have come west to wait for us.