Bunker Hill (CV 17) - Naval Cruise Book

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gdg to patch up lines that had been torn open by shrapnel. Another search was launched, and the ship rested. At evening, the combat air patrol returned, as did all of the search but Lieutenant Cjgb P. I. Touw, with his radioman W. H. Hammer, and their escort- ing fighter, Lieutenant Cjgj Doc Davisson, believed to have been jumped by a, wolf. gang of Jap lighters. Although enemy planes came within twenty- eight miles of the force at sunset, they failed to close and the Bunker Hill and the Task Force steamed west after the Jap. Reports indicated that more than 350 Jap planes and their crack Naval pilots had been wiped from Hirohito's fast dwindling stock of air power. JUNE 20, 1944. The morning search of June 20 returned with negative results, and the ship continued to sweat out the chase as the afternoon search made its long Hight. Men exhausted by the battle of the previous day stretched out at their gun stations, sprawled on deck along- side the island. Plane captains dozed in the shade of aircraft that waited, waited, waited for V I P a crack at the Jap Heet. The sun began its slow drop toward the horizon. In ter-ship communication suddenly crackled in Admiral Montgomery's Flag Plot. Tele- types in ready rooms began to tick off the information. REPORTS CONTACT JAP FLEET 15-CON, 135-25E. CRS WESTER- LY. SPD 20K.', It was 1555. Pilots tightened their para- chute harnesses, eager and relieved of the strain of waiting, and were ordered to man their planes. The planes, which had been warmed up hourly during the waiting period, began roaring down the deck at 1611, fighters, Helldivers and fat Avengers, bellies full of bombs and torpedoes for immediate delivery. Their swift ascent into the air caused Com- mander Shifley, in his report of the action as Air Group Commander, to term a superb performance . . . and definitely assisting this group in being the first to attack the enemy fleet. In the gallery walkways, gunners and radio- men who weren't making the first strike, as well as pilots and spectators, cheered and signaled thumbs up to every pilot and crew going down the deck. Broad smiles were on every face, and a prayer in every heart, as the strike left to fight at extreme Hying range and to return in darkness. At the time of the launch, the Jap forces were reported to be 215 miles away, but amplification of the report placed them 100 miles beyond that point. Thus the second deckload of planes, brought up and spotted for launching in a seventeen-minute operation, was held aboard. 1 The long wait began. An attempt was made to relay reports of the action over the ship's announcing system, but the action was too far off for accurate reception. We heard that a search plane had spotted the Jap force and was still sitting over it taking pictures and relaying weather information. He re- ported two carriers, three cruisers, eight de- stroyers in one force, and another force of one carrier and four battleships. He reported no airborne opposition.

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On the hangar deck, rearming crews pre- pared to load bombs that had been brought up from the magazine. Every now and then they saw a Hellcat grinding slowly around the traffic circle of the Wasp. It was Eddie Dooner, who'd scored at least one Zeke kill over Guam but had picked up small calibre AA through his engine and was forced to come back. He hit the water on his approach and apparently had been wounded or was stunned in the landing, for he was not seen to get out of the plane. Thirty minutes had gone by since the ship had gone to G.Q. Somewhere over the hori- zon, the Hellcats were mixing it up with the attacking Japs. Fragmentary reports drifted over the gunnery telephone system. It was nearly 1100 when the first enemy planes were reported visually at ten miles, and the task group off our port quarter opened fire. High above were the white etchings of vapor trails, tracing the paths of the hunters. Ships of our screen opened fire. Our own guns were trained, hovered as they traced a target, paused. Three crippled fighters were trying to land aboard the Wasp, on our port beam. Out of a cloud came a.Jap-every gunner on the ship saw it but had to hold fire to avoid hitting the crippled fighters. It was a Judy, a Jap carrier-based dive bomber. He made a shallow dive on the Wasp, dropped his bombs and pulled out, probably with a smile of satisfaction that died a- borning, however, for he had missed, and the Wasp and a destroyer on her bow opened up and nailed him. Almost simultaneously, our own guns opened up on another pair of dive bombers coming in on our port quarter. Both of them were literally blasted out of the sky, falling to the sea in blazing pieces, but not until their bombs had been dropped. On the hangar deck, re-arming crews had moved bombs amidships for ready jettisoning, and were standing by when the Jap made his drop. The drop was close, a near-miss that geysered water island-high, and threw ugly, hot shrapnel into the ship, blasted through 1 140 splinter shields, stabbed in every direction gn the hangar deck and through the skin of the Ship above the armor plate. Lieutenant Gordon Stallings, at his battle station on a forty millimeter director, went down mortally wounded. The two halves of a lifeboat lay beside G. F. Taphilias, Sea2c, instantly killed on the hangar deck. On the third deck, shaving cream and cherry pie were incongruously mixed as the shrapnel blasted through Ship's Store and the galley. Even as the attack continued, the re-arm- ing crews on the hangar deck went on with their task of jettisoning the bombs as others directed the care of the wounded. The prac- tice drills of months paid high dividends that day as emergency dressing stations treated the wounded. At one station an ordnanceman assisted the treating of a dozen men, before he discovered his own wounds. ' Meanwhile, fighters of the Task Force were wiping out the cream of Japanese Naval Avi- ation. Most of the fighting was done at altitudes so high that first knowledge of a skirmish came as a broken, blazing Nip plane fell into the sea. Twenty minutes after our guns had quieted, an uncontrolled Jap Judy screamed out of the blue and into the sea off the starboard bow. Our own fighters, al- though not vectored out to the main body of the attack, accounted for six sure kills, bringing the day's total up to twenty-one A check of sick bay revealed that more than eighty men were wounded in some degree aS a result of the near-miss, with only sixteen of them hit badly enough to be hospitalized. A brief resumption of the fight occurrCCl Shortly after noon, when a quartet of JUdYS blazed down out of the sun and clouds OH our starboard beam but failed to score with their bomb loads. Shortly thereafter the ship went into Con- dition One Easy, and hot coffee and sand- wiches made their appearance at the 81111 batteries and on the flight deck. RCPM Partles cleaned up the minor damage done below decks and the Gas Gang went over the

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The daylight left, and unidentified Planes sent all hands to battle stations. Shortly after 2000, two night fighters were launched to cover the landings. There was no moon and the force remained blacked-out. -At 2030, the wing-lights of the Hrst returning fighters appeared and the task group turned on its lights, looking like a vast, drowsy city- but willing to sacrifice the security of dark- ness in order to land its planes. The first three planes landed aboard with- out trouble. Then they came in alone, and in pairs. Wing lights of two bombers, waved off because a plane had not cleared the land- ing area, went past the starboard side of the ship and then, with a sputter of engines, sank lower and lower and finally were extingusihed as water landings were made. Several more fighters landed, then a bomber from a sister carrier came aboard. His wing- man followed him, came up the groove, took the cut and went into the barrier, his pro- pellor buried deep in the deck. Crews rushed feverishly' to clear the wreckage. Every second counted. You could look up, if you had the time, and see planes making water landings, destroyers combing the water with search- lights, picking up pilots and crewmen. But once clear, we took aboard a few'more planes. A bomber from one carrier, a fighter from the Wasp, another from another carrier. It was nearly midnight when the last plane dropped out of the sky and we recalled the night fighters. The sparse results which we heard of the strike seemed dull and uninteresting. Tension and shock filled every man topside. The flight deck crews were soaked with grease, salt-water, sweat. But their only thought was of the men who had been forced to make water landings. Few men talked. The horror of the night, the anxiety for the men who had carried the attack to the Jap, kept them silent as they cleared the deck that night, spotting for a dawn strike that would be launched in but a few hours. And it wasn't until that strike had been launched and recovered, the follow- ing day, that the ship realized the smashing blows its squadron had dealt in the long. sought chase. The Bunker Hill strike group had been first to sight the enemy and to attack, passing up a group of six oilers and three destroyers to hit a force consisting of a large carrier flanked by a battleship, two cruisers and several de- stroyers. Lieutenant Commander Arbes led the dive bombers to the carrier through a wall of intense anti-aircraft fire, putting his 1000- pound bomb just aft of amidshipsg his wing- man, Lieutenant Bob Horne, scored a hit with one of his 250-pounders and near-misses with his other and his 1000-pounder, doing a heavy-duty strafing job with his twenty-mil1i- meters on the pullout. Lieutenant Cjgj Ster- ling was observed to score a hit forward, and Smith and McIntyre tallied with hits on the after part of the flight deck. Lieutenant Art Jones dove his division on the carrier from the north, and with wingmen Pilcher and Huntsman saw one direct hit and two damaging near-misses, before belching columns of flame and smoke obscured the target. Commander Musick took his wingmen, Carter and Mason, in on a torpedo run fol- lowed by Jim Gagnon and Willie Folkedahl in individual runs, but were unable to observe hits because of their jinking and eVaSiVC tactics through AA, but Gagnon and M8809 reported at least three large explosions follow- ing the runs. Lieutenants LeCompte, and Buxton, seeing that the carrier was virtualll' doomed, threw their fish at the Kongo 012155 battleship. Their gunners reported that the torpedo wakes indicated sure hits, but WCTC unable to wait for confirmation. Lieutenant Logan Meathead Phillips saw his torpedo miss the battleship but go on to hit the port bow of a cruiser spinning behind the first ship. At the beginning of the attack, Commander Shifley and Wingman Jerry Rian fought Off 9' SFOUP Of Seven Jap fighters attempting to head off the torpedo planes, downing two' sending two others away in smoke, and thot'