California (BB 44) - Naval Cruise Book

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the boat deck above that. The splintering ef- fect of the blast plastered bell bottom clad bod- ies against bulkheads, decks, and overheads all the way from the magazine to the boat deck. Buming fuel oil escaping from the ruptured tanks below caught the flame of the explosion A fireball formed and shot through the hatch throwing fiery debris in all directions: up, down, and sideways. It killed, bumed, maimed and plastered everything in its path on bulk- heads nearby Dave and I scraped their burned and mu- tilated bodies off the melted, peeling paint the next day. We scraped them off with putty knives when the clean up work began. Put chunks of burned and blasted flesh and bones in Navy blankets, tied the ends when it was full, and canied it to the main deck above where the burial detail took it to the mainland for an un- marked punch bowl grave. Dave mentioned at the time, f'Man, was I lucky to be in the rec room when it blew. There is no way I could have survived that terrible impact ten feet closer. Fourteen of us, who made up the Four- Port repair crew found ourselves on a torpe- doed and sinking battleship with death and destruction everywhere, bracketed by three torpedoes: one aft, two forward, and a 500 LB bomb bursting above us. We had nothing to do but wait until someone brought relief. We were four decks below the main deck, sealed in by watertight doors. The ship began to shiver and shake like a dog passing razor blades, as she settled deeper into the mud The ole Prune Barge was like a behemoth, a floating steel behemoth, torn and shaken by the fury of battle that caused her to settle un- der fire, mud, and oil-covered debris. Some of that debris still floated in the waters of Pearl Harbor for months and years after. Oil still seeps from the USS Arizona fifty years after the battle, where all of the Arizona Band mem- bers expired in the bowels of the explosion that broke her in two. The Calqfornia groaned and strained at hawsers which held her fast to fox three. The two 50 foot islands of concrete proved their rooted strength for holding fast to a sinking ship. Fire bumed forward, starboard, and heavy on the portside where three torpedoes hit. One followed another forward, and one tore into port the side aft. The second one forward fol- lowed the first, unerringly, almost immediately after the first blast, into the bowels of the ship where it destroyed everything in its path. Explosions broke the watertight seal in our compartment. A mixture of fuel oil and water seeped through a break in the forward door. The smell was awful, like kerosene and burn- ing gunpowder. Manley, breathing fumes seep- ing into the compartment, became very sleepy and stretched out on the steel deck covered by the brick red battleship linoleum. Water and oil licked at his feet and legs as it began to gather along the corner where the deck met the bulkhead. The deck soon became very slippery. It was not easy to slip and skid around on the greasy surface I shook Manley, but he didn't respond. We rolled him up a little higher. When that man sacked out you couldn't wake him. The deck had some slant to it now. We pushed Manley up a little higher to get him out ofthe water and oil. Didn't move him high enough. Water kept coming through space in the lower edge of the forward door. Manley kept slip- ping into it. We wanted to secure the water- tight door, and stop the leak with a dog wrenchg but it didn't work. Others slipped on the deck some more, un- able to get enough leverage to tighten the bend in the steel door caused by the explosion. Mix- tures of water and oil kept coming in, not in a gushing quantity, but enough to let us know our compartment would fill before too long, with us in it. There was no way for us to get out. Nobody said much. One shipfitter striker, an unrated apprentice, found a guitar under the conveyor belt, and began to strum a few chords. He was skilled enough to get our attention. Music broke the silence, and we even sang a few choruses of f'You are my sunshinef' ZERo ATTACK by Marvin B. Graham One aftemoon we had just set condition Zebra-Easy, which meant we could open any hatch marked with Z or E. I could hear an air attack going on topside and just could not help going up to see it. When I came topside I was standing on the starboard quarter deck watching a Japanese plane flying low over the water heading our way. He just kept coming but so much flak was going at him I knew he could not make it to us. I could see 5 shells hit the water in front of him and even see steam from his engine when he flew through the water thrown up by the shells. I decided maybe I had better be someplace else. So I went around the super structure, pulled on my flash gear and leaned or. Ester ffl. l was looking at the big til on the boat I looked down and saw the little uteel cove Bible sent to me by my grandmother I tnougn l was safe as could be but w hen l sam that I'5i'ii: I yelled loudly 'Runfl As l ran through 'ne hatch to safety in the super structure I near.. the plane explode and saw firejust behind me That was lesson number one on how, 3 stay on your battle station and keep your none out of air attacks. I later went back out to the quarter deck after things were squared avi ay. I could not believe the big til on the lifeboat was bloxerr away, leaving only a large hole. I had no idea to yell and run till I looked at my Bible, and Ilm smart enough to know who made me do itg to this day I still praise ine Lord for saving my life. It was a very exciting time for a teenager from Missouri. TORPEDO HIT by John W Burden I was in the shipfitter shop on the third deck portside when the torpedo hit. All void covers had been removed so compartments could air out for inspection on Monday. Water gushed into the shop andl was up to my knees by the time I reached the door. The force of the water helped me pull the water-tight door shut. I dogged it down although the water pres- sure from the other side was sealing it tightly I immediately went to my damage control sta- tion on the starboard side and had my party start opening the flood valves for counter flood- ing. The ship came slowly back toward an even keel and settled down in the mud with a list of five degrees and 20 minutes. While we were doing this the ship had been hit by bombs. One large one hit on the armored deck right above us. Smoke was everywhere and everything was a mess. u. I9-13-1946 USS C'r1liforr1ir1 f?lP.XflIAQ Imni. lt'i'1ii1'rmjx'of'tI!,vtfr' Sg'lIfg'!',N'vl L l l' 'X MJMM.

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ibn, up . H125 wi 2 ...Q-t In . ? . ffm., .? 'i.Q .j. 'la. Wir-. P af, B ,ia if 'hai Q 'ii K . 3' -. rl , if .Fi If wi, F59 f a- Mhz' 1 .- 1 A xi-F fu wwf '5 .mv gf , . .wr I v 11 .5 . ,,,- ir., .f .v Y I , dll- ' fr- f rt me ar 1 aff. .dh rf! if 'ia aff -ie 'i fig 'fl We tWk'st Wqqiniai is on fire. and the Nevada is getting under way. They're in the channel and headed for open sea. Oh my God, the Arizona just blew sky high. lt broke in the middle like a monster fire- cracker. Smoke and fire is a mile in the air. No ammunition when we finally got per- mission to open the locked ready boxes. We're forming an ammunition working party all the way down the amidship's hatch right into the magazine. Got'ta get some anti-aircraft shells to fight these yellow bastardsf, Have nothing to fight with. Some of the guys are so pissed off, they broke into the spud locker. Now they're throwing potatoes at planes flying near enough to crash into usf, This is horrible. Lordy mercy, one of our men just dived out of the sky lookout Ccrows nestj 50 feet above us. He did a perfect Olympic swan dive. WOW! He made it. There he is. He surfaced. A small barge is picking him up. What a dive ! They strafed our own Liberty launch in the open channel. The Coxln tried to change direction from Fleet Landing, to make a hur- ried return to the ship. He didn't make it. It looks like all hands died in the launch. Some are hanging over the side with their head and shoulders draggin' in the waterf, All you guys sealed in, stand by. We can- not break watertight integrity. The ship is hang- ing by the hawsers. Damage control is going to see if they can do some counter flooding to keep the ship from capsizing. Out. 'fWait a minute, I thought. This is no time to shut out. What else is happening? That was the launch Frank and I missed. f'Four port, aye, aye,', was my quiet re- sponse? I read the transmission loud and clear. We were in real trouble. 'fChief, that explosion aft was a torpedo launched from an airplane. Can you be... Explosions, and then more explosions a double blast picked the ship up again, and finally let it settle once more into the mud of Pearl Harbor. This time it was in front, up for- ward, and much closer to us. We knew it was a mortal blow. The ship began to list some more. We could hear the almost human like groans of the straining steel decks again, and could actually feel it sinking. Coming to rest at about a 15 degree position, the Battleship Caljornia sank to the Quarter-deck with me and 13 oth- ers in a sealed compartment. Buried alive. No way to get out. 6'Are we gonna' die here, Chief? said one of the electricians. Hard to tell, Mac. We may be in here for awhile? Ship shaking explosions ripped into the portside of the Calfornia, forward of midships. It tore a 30 foot hole in the 14 inch belt of steel armor that should have offered some degree of protection. It also severed the minimum ar- mor beneath the 14 inches of steel designed to ward off torpedo assaults. There was a moment when it seemed like some almost monstrous unseen hand lifted the ship up in the water. Shaking, straining, and tearing it, with a terrible shock of two more explosions. The mighty ship settled again. At first we thought it was the main battery firing a broadside with all the guns rigged outboard. That doesn't make any sense to me, said the shipfitter, a little short guy about five feet tall, and thin as a rail. Why would we fire big 14 inch 50 caliber main battery? These are guns that can throw 1,000 LB projectiles 35,000 yards. Why fire big guns when only low fly- ing planes are firing at us? Are we firing at an offshore fleet? said Manley from his prone position on the deck. Manley wasn't feeling too good, and it didn't take him long to spread out. There must be a fleet. Otherwise, where did the Japanese planes come from? The short shipfitter quickly responded. There is no way we could be firing the big guns, he said. 4'The shells would have passed by us on this conveyor belt. Nothing has happened in here since we arrived. We dogged everything down. We're hit, and hit hard, the Chief said again. Once aft and twice forward. lt's got to be Japanese torpedoes. I just know it in my bones. Fast upon the realization that explosions hit us some distance forward, we settled back for a breather. We decided the gunners were not firing the main batteries after all. What felt like a third and final torpedo hit the ship deep in the forward section. It simply glided through the 30 foot hole made in the side by the first, and delivered tons of explosive gunpowder into our sensitive inner belly. This is a deduction I made a year later when I saw the yawning black hole on the forward portside of the Calyfornia. The ship, after being floated in its twisted agony, rested in place at Pearl Harbor's 10110 dry dock where we could see the damage that gouged her open on the 7th, From the safety of the dock, we could see what happened to us on that awful day. Within seconds after the torpedo rocked us in the forward part of the ship, the second explosion forward blew up in the inner parts. Another muffied blast blew and braced us from above. Lighter, perhaps, but scary. lt feels like they are pounding us into the mud of the Harbor with a bunch of massive iron coated fists, said a red headed machinist's mate. He towered above us all when he stood straight. 'The last three happened in the space of about eight or ten minutes? The Chief was quick to note. After the second torpedo hit us forward amidships, the voice of the commentator topside at Central came back on the intercom. His voice in the headphones yelled, All hands abandon ship! Abandon ship! Abandon ship, hell,', I thought. What about us here in this compartment four decks below the main deck? A flash of alternatives went through my mind, none of which included staying in that compartment much longer, but there was no way out. Explosions forward of us, and a mixture of oil and water filling up in the compartment aft of us, there was no place to go. Repair four port...remain. Repeat, re- main. Do not...repeat do not break watertight integrity. We'll be back when we can reboard the ship. The words, Abandon Ship, chilled my bones. What was all this about when we can reboard the ship ? My flesh started to crawl around my chest, up my back into the bottom of my neck. Then it crawled all the way back again into the middle of my rectum where it quivered and finally came to a halt. This feel- ing happened two seconds after the abandon ship order. There we were, sealed in a watertight com- partment. The doors tightened both fore and aft. The after compartment from whence we came, tested oil and water. The forward door was sprung a little and leaking a small stream of water. Central Station ordered us to maintain watertight integrity. A contrary state of affairs, buried alive with nothing but fresh air, and the lights still shining. No one in the Repair party knew about the abandon ship order except me, and I didn't feel like saying anything about it with abandon ship orders still ringing in my ears. Central ordered us to maintain our posi- tion. No one showed any signs of anxiety. I was uneasy with my secret, but perfectly willing to wait and see. How could I tell thirteen other guys that we could not leave our battle stations and save ourselves? A quick decision later, I pressed the button for Central, hoping some- one was still on the line. Central, Central, this is Repair four port. Please confirm the last communication. Please confirm...? Repair four port. That is a confirm. We are abandon ship. Remain your battle stations. We will come back for you when we can board ship again. I am leaving now. Then a click, and an unbelievable shock of silence followed. Everyone in the working party held their eyes on me. I could partially imagine what was going through their minds. Hell, I knew what was going through mine. They are changin' position, I reported. Since we changed our position early in the encounter, nothing was strange about Central changing theirs. The crew relaxed a bit and resettled into their otherwise comfortable but somewhat tense positions. No one said anything for awhile. I thought the best we could do is get out of there. It was like an awful dream. I didn't think anything that bad could ever happen to me. There was silence for a few minutes as the ship began to settle into a stable 15 degree port list. The tension ended in an instant. In a frac- tion of a second, disaster struck again, Baaam...a heavy bomb exploded in the midship's hatch above us. This was a muffled explosion from above that slammed us into the mud. Dave Kennedy said to me the next day, Warren, a special working party was passing ammunition, hand to hand, up the midship's hatch from the powder magazine several decks below. The bomb came down the hatch. It ex- ploded, setting off the 5 inch 38 anti-aircraft shells killing the men who were lifting and passing the shells upward to the main deck and

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-Gr Q mf, Y! uCII'0S.S'IiIlg the Line HC.'6I'6I7ZlNIj' aboard the California. lC0urtesy of Captain B. V Burrowsl We carried the injured and dead to the quarter deck. As soon as possible they would be taken to the Naval Base. Many were saved from compartments where they were trapped and had to be cut out with acetylene torches. Late in the day when nothing more could be done. those of us who were still aboard were ordered to swim to Ford Island. The water was covered with burning oil, but tug boats used fire hoses to make a path for us to swim through. Rumors were all about that the Japa- nese were going to attack during the night. We were all issued BAR's lBrowning Automatic Riflesl and spent the night waiting in the dark- ness. During the night a flight of planes came in and we fired on them as did many others, with some being hit. They turned out to be our own carrier-based planes that ignored orders and came in on the wrong vector. REMEMBRANCES by Albert G. Melville It was the summer of l94 l, I can't remem- ber the exact date. I guess I was in the last group of rookie sailors from the San Diego Training Station to go aboard the Califorizia for duty. There was about 20 of us, I think. My memory of the event is very sketchy, at best, since all of this happened over a half a century ago. We all wore undress whites and we carried our sea bag and hammock all rolled up together on our shoulders. We boarded a 50 foot launch lsent out from the Californiaj and headed out into Long Beach Harbor. We were all full ofantici- pation and hope that we would not mess up getting on hoard. We knew we had to salute the flag and then the UD. and ask for permis- sion to come aboard. We pulled up to the accommodation lad- der, which looked like a polished mahogany staircase hooked up to the side of the ship. There was a landing at the bottom and thc top. The steps were about three feet wide. The rail- ing also seemed to be highly polished ma- hogany with all the fittings of bright brass. It was beautiful. I remember wondering if I would be able to carry my gear up and do all the necessary things without messing up. I felt much better standing on the quarter-deck wait- ing to be assigned my duty and division. I was assigned to the First Division which was lo- cated on the starboard Crightj bow and turret No. one. The deck was so clean, I think you could eat off of it. All of the general instructions, such as when to eat, when to be in a clean uniform of the day, reville, and taps, etc. were preceded by a bugle call. Each being different and very colorful. We prided ourselves on knowing what each call signified. Most of the crew slept in hammocks, only petty officers had cots. We ate family style and always at the same table with the same people. We lived out of our sea bags, not out of a locker. This routine was part of the old Navy. It seemed as though the rook- ies stood all the undesirable watches. I think 90'Zi of my watches were stood at night which left all day to work. Cf course, as part of the deck crew my jobs included scraping paint, painting, washing the decks and so forth. On the day of infamy, Dec. 7, l94l, I was on the 4:00 to 8:00 a.m. watch. That meant I was relieved after general mess was over. So I was asked to help clean up the mess with the mess cook. He went to the galley to get warm chow, I went to the garbage scow with a tu- reen ofgarbage from our mess table. The Cali- fornia was tied up to a key at Ford Island. The garbage scow was on our portside about midships. Our mess station was one deck be- low the maindeck, close to midship. As I was dumping the garbage, looked across the har- bor and watched a plane drop a bomb on the Ogalala, which was tied up at Maryls point across the channel from us. I only saw a black plane, but I knew it was a Japanese plane. tlt was common knowledge aboard ship that we would be at war with Japan before the year was out.J Just about the time I saw the bomb drop, general quarters was sounded, followed by the announcement this is no drill! . I don't know why but I took the tureen back to the mess table and headed for my battle station. My battle sta- tion was the magazine handling room for tur- ret irl . There were about a dozen of us, includ- ing one officer. Shortly after we arrived, we felt a jolt and the ship listed to the portside. We felt another jolt and started drawing water through the ventilating system. I remember the officer in charge estimated we were drawing in about 120 gallons a minute. The water was up to our waists when we tried to lift the hatch, with no luck. We had been jamming clothes into the openings, again with no luck. By the time the water and oil was about up to our arm- pits, someone opened the hatch and we were able to get out. When we reached topside we heard gun- fire and explosions. I headed for the port case- ment guns looking for a friend of mine, Billy Santo. We were both from the same area, joined the Navy at the same time and came aboard together and usually went on liberty together. We were both pretty good swimmers and had often talked about diving off the bow of the ship. We ran into each other about mid-ship and since the order had been given to abandon ship, we both thought this was an ideal time to dive off the bow. So we didjust that. The only problem was that there was about ll4 inch of heavy oil on top of the water, so when we came up we were dark-skinned people. We swam to the shore. Billy and I headed for the Ford Is- land boat dock where we knew they had a gas pump so we could wash the oil off of ourselves. I remember there was still some machine gun fire from the enemy planes and some tracer bullets came close to us. We made our way, I think, to an officer's club where they had past- ries and coffee for everyone and anyone, where we were told we could get clean clothes over at the hangar that had not been destroyed. We crossed the field and were issued clothes. We were also able to wash and take a bath. At that time they had me fill out a postcard that was preprinted with statements to be checked off. We were to sign it and address it, and leave it: It was to be mailed home, but my mother never received it. I had cut my knee, I don't know where or when, but since it didn't seem serious, I never had it cared for. We returned to our ship. Mon- day morning I was put in a working party that went below decks and helped bring dead bod- ies out, open up passageways and generally try to clean things up. It wasn't easy, the ship was still listing about l0 or 15 degrees to the port and down by the bow. We were able to eat at Ford Island in the main building. On the 9th of Decemberl was offered a job in a boat crew to help clean up the harbor, pick up trash, wood, bodies, clothing or anything that was in the harbor. By the l0th, my leg was hurting me and I decided to limp a little. As time went on. it got worse. By the morning of the l2th, I needed help to walk. So I was sent to the Na-