Bunker Hill (CV 17) - Naval Cruise Book

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KAVI EN G A Christmas party, that's what everybody talked about. Big turkey dinner, beer on the beach, cocktails at the club, Wl'10SC tropical decor was replete with jungle smells. It would be nice to let Admiral William Bull Halsey be Santa Claus-he was our South Pacific Commander. Admiral Bull was reluctant, but he promised a surprise. December 21, 1943. This is New Ireland, these dots represent Jap airfields. This squared-off space is a town, named Kavieng. We will strike shipping in this harbor. The Air Officer, Commander J. M. Carson, swept his hand over the briefing chart and added a few words, then he dis- missed his class, consisting of Air Group Seventeen. That's Christmas for you. Kavieng. First Apartment on the left after you turn down Rabaul Boulevard-just before you get to Truk Square. God bless 'em if we have to go get 'em at Christmas Time. We went. Christmas Day found the Bunker Hill deeper in enemy territory than she or any other carrier had been since Pearl Harbor. Back home you were lining the streets to see an extra special feature at the theatre, you were drinking rye highballs and giving way to bad cases of telephonitusg you were carv- ing the turkey at the head of the table-as the old man should dog you were wondering where the hell your son, your brother, or your husband was. If he was aboard the U.S.S. Bunker Hill, he was at Kavieng. He saw and helped launch and fiew with the V of blue-backed white-trimmed bombers, torpedo planes and fighters that swooped down on sleeping Kav- ieng and stabbed its harbor contents to death. He saw the reports showing a medium AK sunk, another heavily damaged, and several motor torpedo boats and barges' left burning. Your son Mac the Sailor heard about a ship- mate who didn't fare so well: Lieutenant Cjgb H. C. Carby, torpedo pilot, and his crew were hit over the target, forced down at sea near enemy territory. Efforts to rescue them were to no avail, but with undaunted courage these shipmates took over where Grumman had been forced to leave off' . . . Forty-four days later they were rescued, after having spent twenty-nine days in a rubber boat and the remaining fifteen days on a Jap-held island being hunted like Wild animals. Sailor Mac was there and he'll never forget it- a small force lost in the fathomless mystery of a vast Pacific, with the world and Christ- mas aeons away . . . That night the torpedo planes came out for us again. They searched, criss-crossed and redoubled, but the Skipper and Admiral Sher- man guided us at a comforting speed toward hometown base. The .laps gave up. The next day we had Christmas dinner. Sailors sweated down a ton of turkey, drank lovely iced-tea, cracked nuts with holding pins, ate pockets full of runny candy fthe heat, re- member 95, and crawled off to a quiet corner with pen and stationery. Dear Sally Cand! or Suej: I spent the strangest Christmas you ever dreamed of . . . His written voice trailed off into an Arctic dream, a dream trimmed with F our Roses and brown sugar, with tinkling wine glasses and lethargic mel- odies, with Sally fandfor Suel. Half way back to base the U.S.S. Bunker Hill lost steering control, turned exactly 1800 about face and set sail for Kavieng. The alleged lost steering control turned out t0 be a Captain's command, following an Ad- miral's order, following information that our new hometown, Kavieng, was aboutnding in Shipping once more. The Holiday EXprCSS churned back past the shadow posts of Truk. No one asked: they knew we would hit 011 New Year's Day. So the first day of 1944 we struck again, but this time it wasn't a surprise. AHEFY Zeros circled over the target, darting in and and out and around our formation, and, HS usual, meeting their ancestors dressed in charred flying suits. Big Sam Silber, fightfil' Sk1PPC1', flexed his fifty-calibre muscles and three Zekes regretted the day that D011

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A iodkouf qc. Jams of chicago, Fifth Divi- gignj picked them up in his binoculars. Bettys! he yelled to the officer on watch. The word sped to the bridge, and the weirdly haunting notes of the Torpedo Defense sent all hands to gunnery battle stations. Then came General Quarters, and even while the clanging noise still iilled our ears, our guns were spitting hot steel and blinding flashes into the calm air. Sixteen strong, these twin- engined Japanese torpedo planes ran hell- bent toward our formation. They reached the raging inferno in twos and threes, only to settle into the ocean, exploding and burn- ing liercely. Our own guns sent six of the Jap prides to their ancestors, our Combat Air Patrol splashed four more, and a screening destroyer was seen to drop another, for a total of eleven kills that were observed from this ship. It is doubtful if any of the Son of Heaven's valiant returned to their Marshall Island bases that night. God, guns, Grum- man and Captain Ballentine's seamanship saved us from a collision course with any of the Nippon's deadly fish. For days following the invasion, time moved slowly, we patrolled with devoted vigilance, and Tarawa-having fallen-was rapidly be- ing converted into an American instrument. Betio's airstrip was reconverted, larger and better, for land-based fighters. Time rolled on, and with the advent of December our crew jokingly referred to the Bunker Hill Island of the Gilbertsf' Several days later we started on a southerly journey, leaving our other forces farther north, where they carried out a devastating attack against the Mar- shalls . . . a piece of work that cost the American Navy one of its truly great air heroes Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare. While these forces blasted the japs on the North, our smaller force, comprised of the Bunker Hill, some new battleships and our future right arm , a sister Hattop, delivered pre-Christmas surprise packages to Tojo's boys on Nauru. Gur gifts included a thirty- minute workout with sixteen-inch shells from our battlewagons, we might add, .mm gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Our base never looked lovelier. Green hills, jungled valleys, palm-beached inlets and pot- bellied natives who welcomed our return with salutes from their outrigger canoes. The 0 -. f ' . ' Cliff Ko' 1 1 . . 3-R . ,. ,,,, ,,,.- - , ...., . j... -,Mp H . he . as - so 1 Y - 'A , 'rT! :L Y l gym? sal' ' V L X ik fi A?-' J i ' 4 ' .5 ii' ,,.-.f'.ii-i.'-' ..., -Q ,, ' 4 J - Q ff 4 V s f '- . , 1 ' -'.-- 'J' hp 1- Wi, .ff H ,D an-. - .A-F. i -1 , f 11 . X. at V I , Ili! . 'N ix Q.. 1' I R, 3 ' i ' f' . . ' we 2 I, .x i , , 1 .Y Q E. . if -fsfffliil sa i X ir, J X jf., , 'ff' , 'i .T 5 ' ' 1 1- '-r t,gfJ!tL'kv 1:25 20 I, I , K - I ' in Ti liifiiliid X , J . I . ' ' Captain issued greetings and well done to his crew, adding that he hoped they would get ashore on recreation parties, they de- served the finest of rests available, he said. The Air Group went ashore for rest and flying exercises, the gunners reloaded our vast magazines with new, shiny parcels of bomb-shaped TNT, oliicers and crew so- journed ashore for beer and baseball, and it rained to beat hell every day. December's 'teens were waning, and the mailman sweated and swore and delivered to the Bunker Hill enough mail to match a Christmas rush season in a medium-sized city. It was great to be alive once more, for Sally and Sue crashed through with lovely, lovely memoirs de Amer- ique, the least of which were not proxied kisses .from junior, mamma, or somebody else's twenty-year-old daughter. 125

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,- ' ' - . L+ ... - M,,,-..- vdzi.-ff - :zz , f1 g-fafff:-ffif - N XX : 1 T--4 1,--f :f F we-1 i7 W 4 l l ff - XX 'Tig ' 1Sn5 X-L'?-sm A X '54, X --.. A fg XXX, 'ff 13+- W5 Ameche invented the airplane. Other fighters took their tolls, and the torpedo planes, bom- bers and lighters from our Air Groups left two cruisers in sinking condition. It was a hit parade day for Bomber Skipper Moe Vose's Helldivers. Only dark spot of the day came when it was reported that our shipmate Lieutenant George Freed and Chief Photog- rapher's Mate H. C. Sharkey were shot down over the target. They were following their duty to the utmost, and it ended in death. That we were leaving Kavieng the next day was not bad news to the Bunker I-Iill's crew. While eager to smack the laps, they were also eager to get a good night's sleep, a New Year's dinner, and some more mail from the S and S twins. We steamed toward our island paradise, a veritable New York, a pos- sible mecca, a damned good place for relax- ing. That steering trouble again. You won't believe it, but the next day found us headed back for what had to be our hometown, Kavieng. One bluejacket remarked that it reminded him of Baltimore: once he got there he could never get out. A January 4 dateline in American news- papers several days later noted tersely that a fast carrier force had struck Kavieng, New Ireland, for the third successive blow. Big headlines screamed about the Government's taking over railroads, while other heads told of American airforces plastering Germany. We guessed we weren't very large frogs in this big pond. Oh well, Admiral Santa Claus had said we were doing marvelously. We believed in him. This time the boys found a pair of destroyers among the list of arrivals since we last saw K-. Torpedo hits, bomb hits and near misses by the Bunker Hil1's and another carrier's airmen left both ships sink- ing at the harbor entrance. Losses of the day included Ensign Bugs Beedle, fighter pilot, who was lost to Jap fighters. His loss was partially revenged by stellar marksmanship on the parts of Don Runyon and H. F. Hol- man, a TBF gunner, who got a Zeke apiece. January 5, 1944. No kidding, this time we were headed for port. MARSHALLS It was good to be home again. The Skipper urged us to go ashore and do a bit of re- creating, and it didn't take but the one in- vitation to send the bluej ackets swarming over the side, into landing barges steered by bronzed, wiry coxswains, off to make a liberty beachhead. Intermingled with the few days of relaxation was the same routine of work-reloading supplies and stores, taking on bigger and better bombs, some of which the sailors were already inscribing with: From Gilbert to Marshall, Tokyo Rose, listen to this, it'll kill you, . A hot kiss for the betrayers,' the pseudo captionists went on into the night . . . which was generally sultry and noiseless. There was that mailman again, too. He sent letters from New York to our base in ten days and lessg he flew magazines and min- iature newspapers into our hands, and we read that our,Comma-ndernin Chiefhadmbeen i 1