Bunker Hill (CV 17) - Naval Cruise Book

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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

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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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... -,,,.'.,-:i:1m1m.,.n...-.w--,,,f:u- . .,. .,... -aw, 0.3-9a.L,s.m..2..:a-1.-,e.'z. - a-visiting: Cairo and Teheran. We also saw that the Russian Army had moved n1netCCI1 miles on a fifty-mile front in five days, that General MacArthur staged ea surprise party at Araweg that the Apennines were blazing with artillery fire. Nostalgic reminders of Christmas came in letters that caused senti- mental hangovers. But most of all we could be proud that the New Year saw us on a wide winning leg of the war. It was mid-January and the Bunker Hill once more put to sea. Our force ranged north and east to join what sail locker strategians were predicting to be the greatest battle armada in the history of sea power. The Hrst plan we got a glimpse of was so vast that, in comparison, the Gilberts cam- paign was dwarfed. We rendezvoused with battlewagons and cruisers, more carriers and more destroyers. From horizon to horizon the sea gleamed with bright new men-of-war, manned by proud sailors. The'Bunker Hill's crew viewed these feats in shipbuilding with experienced, appraising eyes: they were now battle veterans who knew what it felt like to face the enemy-time and again. Some of the more composed were inclined to stifle a yawn, while looking at the ship's chrono- meter spin us onward, saying, uninspired, Another operation, another operation. Bolstering our role of importance in the Marshall game lineup were two ace news- papermen who boarded the ship in Santo, APman Spencer Davis, veteran desk man of the San Francisco Bureau, and Scripps-How- ard's and America's Raymond Clapper, whose columns back home were devoured by Presi- dent and partisan alike. You could see them on the flight deck, along the gallery walkways, up and down the island structure-making notes, chatting with the men, andhthen re- tiring to their rooms to write inspired storie of what America's youthful seamen and air men were contributing to a drama whose im- mensity staggered the layman's imagination, D Day in the Marshalls was set for Jan- uary 31, and out strikes began on the twenty- ninth. Captain Ballentine warmed up tg the S 128 .u.4',. , . ,M I .. ,,a,--..........-.,, .t . Q-u... I - ...-.1-1.-m,.g........,e..z,.... f public address mike several days before the gampaign began, expressing his appreciation for the enthusiastic and dogged support his men had given . . . We're going up to enjoy the trade winds around the Marshall Islands, he concluded. The Bluejackets laughed and bent to their tasks. The Old Man'll go anyway, they were saying among themselves, and we'll go right with him. J Just after 0500 on D Minus Two Day the first bomb left its bay from a Bunker Hill HeQldiver over Kwajelein and fF.beye, and once more the war was on. All day long the heavily-laden flying workhorses rose from our deck, and explosions over Nip-held territory reverberated down the main street of Toyko. Then came incendiaries, and then came holi- day colors-it was President Roosevelt's Birthday-and then came those awful head- ache hangovers that Japanese defenders were finding commonplace up and down their outer perimeter. From Kwajelein we moved north to Eniwetok, where it was believed that the wily Jap would be staging plane-attacks out over our sea forces. Cur guess was 100 per- cent on, for strafing Hellcats caught Eniwe- tok's runways shimmering with a combination of brand new Bettys and early morning light. Equal destruction was rained down on neigh- boring targets of Parry, Engebi, and Ulangi, and Tojo's first team never had a chance. The trade Winds felt soft and warm against watchstanders' faces, the hot breath of TNT' blistered the hapless defenders of the Mar- sha1l's hintermost atoll. Just as every successful operation must take its toll, so the Marshall campaign visited tragedy into our ranks. Thirteen memb6fS of Air Group Seventeen made Supreme Saff' 155068, and Raymond Clapper Hew t0 his death with the torpedo squadron's colorful Skipper, Lieutenant Commander Frank Whit' akefs H noted pilot throughout the PacifiC- AIWEWS there to gather first-hand information, Mr. Clapper had flown over the Eniwetck target area with Commander Whitaker to wit- ness a bombing run by TBFS. The Skippfifis plane collided in mid-air with his wingmfma -Q ' . wg . .-.4 134 s it-all 1 . i