Lunga Point (CVE 94) - Naval Cruise Book

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Convoy of LST ' s approaching Lcyte, Nove Even before we got there, we recalled that the Palau Islands had just recently been taken by our forces; in fact, all of them had not yet been taken, and haven ' t been at this writing. We were anchored about 8000 yards off Babel- thaup, one of the larger of the Palaus, and it added nothing to our peace of mind to learn, on anchoring, that the Japs still held that island. We understood, however, that though the island was heavily defended, all their big guns were pointed south in a fixed position, and fortunately, we were north of it. It was mighty fortunate for our side that the Japs couldn ' t train their guns on us, because the anchorage was literally full of all types of naval vessels. Naturally, we not only didn ' t get ashore here, but we had no desire to. It did afford us much satisfaction, however, to listen to the radio in Combat and hear our Peleliu-based pilots talk- ing to each other as they bombed and strafed the Jap installations on Babelthaup, while, out- side, we could see the columns of smoke rising from the island, proving to our satisfaction that the attack had not been in vain. About the only recreation for all hands while in Kossol Roads on this particular visit was ' ' swimming over the side, which was enjoyed by the majority of officers and men, despite the possible presence of sharks that might be sympathetic to the enemy. Foreseeing this danger, however, the E.xec posted men with riffes on the forecastle and fantail, and the Life Guards in the No. 2 Motor Whale Boat were also armed. While the swimming was en- joyed, it was marred by an unfortunate oc- currence when Dr. Tirrell, our Senior Medical Officer, tried to keep up with the young Blue- jackets by diving from one of the .Sponsons and came up with a broken arm, which later nec- essitated his being detached. Having taken on all the supplies and fuel we needed, on Monday, 13 November 1944: 04-08 Anchored as before. 0630 Stationed all special sea details. Made all preparations for getting underway. 0657 Underway from Kos- sol Roads on various courses and speeds con- forming to channel. Captain at the conn. Executive Officer and Navigator on the bridge. 07 1 5 Exercised at General Quarters as modified by special sea details. 0726 Passed through Kossol Passage; took departure on course 275°T and p.g.c, 278° p.s.c. Steaming at 15 knots. 0742 Secured special .sea details. 0747 c s to 18 knots. 0750 Proceeding to position 1000 in cruising formation 5-LS at ig knots. We were finally underway on our first actual operation of the war, and that night the Gap- tain gave us the word. It seems that things were not going too well with General Mac- Arthur ' s invasion of Leyte as far as his supply line was concerned, and the Old Man told us that they had called on the Lunga Point and VC 85 for support. This talk of the Captain ' s was the first he had made to us to keep us in the know, but, from then on, he never failed to

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privileges we I ' lijoy. ' •s, tlicrc u;is soinc- tliiiiK to envy in tiiis Fassari fainiiy after ail. ' I ' lie Cuiptain pondered on tliis, too. .So, in order to prevent vvliole.sale ' ■jumping siiip to talce lip abode on Fa.s.sari, lie decided to Friday, lo November 1944: 16-18 Anchored as before, itv j Made all preparations for getting underway. Stationed all special .sea details. 1(145 .Set Condition Baker. 1719 Sunset. 1725 Underway on various courses and speeds from Northern anchorage, Berth 153, Ulithi Atoll, Western Caroline Islands,on orders from Commander .Se cnth Fleet Dispatch No. 01 0321, dated 10 Novem- ber 1944. Captain at the conn. Executive Officer and Navigator on the bridge. 1 740 Stopped. Hoisted in No. i Motor Whale Boat. 1745 a,c ahead 10 knots. 1 7 ' )9 Set coin se 2i5°T and p.g.c. 212° p.s.c. The E. ecuti c Officer told us that night over the 2;enernl announcing svstem that we were en route lo Kossol Koads, I ' alaii Islands. Our geographies had failed us again, because wc were again headed for a place we had never heard of, and this also was to be a short hop, JK-cause on .Saturday, 11 November 1944: i()-i8 .Steaming as before. i(J02 a c ahead 15 knots. 1604 c c to 172°T and p.g.c, 169° p.s.c. iGjb Anchored in 15 fathoms of water, 75 fathoms of chain at water ' s edge, in Kcssol Pas- sage, Berth No. 8, Palau Islands, Western Caroline Islands. a,e stopped. On this World War I Armistice Day, we found ourselves in strange waters, anxious to prove the results of our long period of training, and determined to do our utmost to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion, and bring about another Armistice Day that would be more significant and lasting than that of 1 1 No ' ember 1918. 1 he Old Swimming Holr at Kossol Passage. 54

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address all liands onci (lie i;ciicnil announcini system every nii hl tiiat lie iiad someiliini of iiUerest to lell about our own operations or tlx- proi ress of the war in (general. He eonstanlly kept lis informed as far as lie eoiild eonscien- tiously do so, and this expression of ccjniidence in us undoubtedly made us try a little harder to deliver the goods. Between uj ' ]0 and 20150 nearly every night while underway, it became quite common for us to hear the Bos ' n ' s Mate sound attention over the general announcing system, followed by, Testing; i-2-[ . Uh, this is the Executive OHicer speaking. I ha e the C aptain here to talk to you; .so e erybody stand by. E erybody stand by. Our mission in the Leyte operations was to proceed with CarDix- 2() to Leyte Ciulf where our planes were to co er the convoys as they sailed through the CJulf in to the Leyte beaches. Our planes did a magnificent job of covering the convnvs as well as our own I ' ask L nit. and To r Poliywogs in supplicating attitude second crossing of the line; btlou-: Four Pollywogs ' with : hair-do ' s, the work of the Royal Barbers. many a ship got safely through to Leyte that might not otherwise hav - made it had it not been for our pilots. In fact, all the .Srjuadnjns in (:arF)i - ' j() turned in a most (reditable per- formance. liRsrJ.M ' Pi. Ni-; ' ■Tuesday, 21 November 1944: 08-12 Steaming as Ix-fore. 09 2 Sighted Jap ' Francis ' . Ship went to Cjeneral Quarters. Plane passed overhead (iring her guns. Dis- tance about 800 yards. oc)-,j Japanese plane ciisa[)[)cared bearing ;j25°r. . l o9 ' )2 that gong rang out its doleful notes. In a Hash, all hands were at their Battle .Stations. With all rjur speed, however, we did not fire a round at him. The Jap had paid us a surprise visit. Not a ship in our Division had picked him up until he was virtu- ally on us, having just sneaked in as they do occasionally. He came zooming by the Bis- marck Sea (CVE 95), which was dead ahead of us. crossed our bow, and flew down our port side at about 200 knots or better and only about 800 feet abo e the water. He was strafing as he flew by, but his strafing hit the waters of the I ' acific only. We could have opened fire with (jur Ciondition HI guns very easily except for tile fact that the Captain saw that our range was fouled by the Bismarck Sea (CA ' E 95) and the Makiii Island (CA ' E 93), and they probably failed to open fire for the same reason. That Son of Nippon missed a golden opportunity to .score, because it is not often that an enemy plane can get in that close wit hout our knowing he ' s coming long before he gets within range of our guns. We will never know what he was up to, and, as he flew over the horizon, we again settled down to our routine with some- thing to talk about for the remainder of the Leyte operation, because it was the first Jap plane most of us had ever seen. We had a most unfortunate occurrence on the morning of 25 November when two of our I orpedfj Bombers collided in mid-air at about (3ooo feet, within view of our ship. The cause of the collision was undetermined and resulted in the death of Ensign Vilbur Francis Berauer, L SNR, the pilot of one of the planes, and his two Air Crewmen, Emmett Douglas Fort, Jr., ARM2C, and Gordon Malcolm Greene, AMM 3c. The other plane made a successful forced landing and the entire crew was picked up by one of our screening destroyers. The loss of 56