When Liscome Bay was hit at 5:13 A.M. by a single torpedo amidships, a “column of bright orange flame” shot a thousand feet in the air. Within seconds, bombs lined up on the flight deck detonated, and with a “mighty roar the carrier burst apart as though she were one great bomb,” tossing high in the air “men, planes, deck frames and molten fragments.” Ships in the vicinity were showered with “fragments of steel, clothing, and human flesh.” Commissioned only a few months earlier, Liscome Bay’s first battle proved to be her last. Twenty-three minutes after being hit, the doomed ship “flared up for the last time and sank hissing.” Those who made it off the sinking carrier into the water found themselves immersed in a “spreading pool of burning oil.”
Hull, which had closed on the burning carrier before she sank, now “entered the oil slick” and lowered her whaleboat to search for survivors, many of whom were in “frightful condition, with shattered limbs, internal hemorrhages, head concussions and horribly disfiguring burns.” Within minutes, Hull’s whaleboat was filled with survivors, most of them “thickly covered…by viscous, stinging fuel oil.” Boats from other ships joined Hull in the rescue operation; in all, 272 survivors were pulled from the water, while 644 of their shipmates—including task group commander Rear Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix (number one in his Annapolis class of 1916) and Liscome Bay commanding officer Captain Irving D. Wiltsie—lost their lives that morning.*
Back at Pearl Harbor two weeks later, Hull’s crew was called to quarters on December 8, 1943, for a change-of-command ceremony, with Lieutenant Commander Charles W. Consolvo, thirty-two, a dark-haired, blue-eyed Virginian and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, taking over. Although he had finished in the bottom 15 percent of his Annapolis class (1935), Consolvo was already carving out a reputation as a highly effective and charismatic officer. In his previous assignment—as executive officer of the Fletcher-class destroyer Ammen (DD-527)—Consolvo had received outstanding marks in his latest fitness report for his “ability to command” and “ship handling.” Asked in the same report for his preference of next assignment, Consolvo wrote: “Remain in destroyers—Pacific Fleet.” During Consolvo’s tenure as Ammen’s second in command, the destroyer participated in the capture of Attu, for which the commander of amphibious operations in the Pacific had commended the ship’s officers and crew for their “splendid contribution…to the accomplishment of the mission,” as well as the occupation of Kiska and “task force sweeps and ocean escort operations in North Pacific, Bering Sea and Aleutian Areas.” Consolvo had previously served as gunnery officer on the destroyer Anderson (DD-411), during which he had the unusual assignment of firing on another U.S. warship. Operating with the aircraft carrier Hornet (CV-8), notable for launching the Doolittle Raid from her flight deck (sixteen U.S. Army B-25 bombers led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle in their raid on Tokyo) and participating in the victorious Battle of Midway, Anderson was ordered to sink the abandoned Hornet when the carrier was badly damaged during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942.
Aboard Hull, it soon became apparent that the seasoned Consolvo had a talent that did not come naturally to every commanding officer—in addition to his athletic parlor trick of “holding a broomstick in his hands and jumping over it forwards and backwards without letting go.” Consolvo was skilled at the training of junior officers to become competent ship handlers and qualified “officers of the deck under way,” capable of operating a vessel at sea in the absence of the captain from the bridge. Consolvo was a bit “didactic” by nature, which aided his tutorial role. To teach others, it also helped that he was a good ship handler, and in that arena Consolvo soon demonstrated his impressive abilities.
Consolvo showed his touch at the conn the first time he brought Hull alongside another ship at sea, which Navy vessels often did to take on fuel and supplies. Many commanding officers exhibited overriding caution when approaching a tanker or supply ship for an underway replenishment, a “high-stress situation” for everyone from the bridge down to the engine room given the potential for a collision. Consolvo was bolder than most skippers, but he also knew what he was doing. Consolvo would overtake the supply vessel from the rear with unusual rapidity, approaching at two-thirds or full speed.* Then he threw the engines into reverse. At the right moment—this was a combination of experience and feel—he ordered ahead one-third, bringing Hull alongside the other ship on a parallel course. Consolvo’s string of orders to the helmsman and engine room was clear, timely, and precise. Soon, the two ships—with lines tethering them together—were steaming along in unison. Done right, this high-speed maneuver was like “a car traveling at sixty miles an hour as it approaches a parallel parking space,” and the driver slamming on the brakes and pulling into the spot “cleanly, without an inch to spare.” Consolvo’s deft handling of the old, prewar destroyer was an amazing sight to behold—awing even other ship captains—and something Hull’s crew soon took pride in.
Ensign Lloyd G. Rust Jr., twenty-four, of Wharton, Texas (50 miles southwest of Houston), came aboard Hull on December 9, 1943—the day after Consolvo assumed command. Signing up right after Pearl Harbor for the Navy’s V-7 program, in which college students were allowed to continue their education and receive commissions upon graduation, Rust, a pre-law major, graduated from the University of Texas in August 1942 and received a deferment to study for the state bar exam to be given in three months. Upon taking the exam, he was ordered to active duty in December and sent to U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipman School on the shore of Lake Michigan at Chicago’s Northwestern University, which during the war would train nearly 26,000 naval officers—including a future PT boat commander named John F. Kennedy—thereby earning the nickname “Annapolis by the Lake.”
For Rust, a solid six-footer with brown hair and eyes to match, and a gregarious nature that included a Texas-size laugh that shook “his whole body and could be heard across a room,” it was not only his first Christmas in uniform and away from home but also his first trip outside his “beloved” Lone Star state. Any pangs of homesickness were eased by his meeting and beginning a serious romance with Dee Dee Wrigley, the attractive scion of America’s leading chewing-gum family, with whom he spent the holidays.*
Although possessing excellent study habits forged by the rigors of law school, Rust found at Midshipman School a curriculum crammed with complex subjects such as celestial navigation, ordnance, and seamanship. For example, one had to solve problems involving math and geometry just to grasp the principles upon which celestial navigation is based. Yet in a scant few months, the Midshipman School turned out newly minted ensigns ready for the fleet. The same process took four years at Annapolis—the main reason for the resentment that graduates of the Naval Academy harbored toward the “ninety-day wonders.” After graduation, Rust went to antisubmarine warfare school in San Diego, then to Pearl Harbor for a brief stint as a decoder—until the Navy finally agreed with him that he was a terrible typist—before being assigned as assistant to a commodore embarked on the destroyer Phelps (DD-360) in Alaskan waters. Not long after, Rust received a card in the mail notifying him that he had passed the state bar examination. After years of hard work to become a lawyer, which had always been “so important” to him, he had made it—yet Rust did not feel like celebrating. After all, he was in the middle of a war with no end in sight, and had already seen enough to know there was no guarantee he would “make it home alive,” let alone ever step into a courtroom as a barrister.
It did not take long for Rust to form an opinion of his new commanding officer on Hull. Rust found Consolvo to be a “tremendous seaman” and “100 percent competent.” Consolvo let it be known he believed it “his duty to teach every man on the ship as much as he could,” and that if he was successful it would not only “help the Navy” but also assist “the war effort and the whole country.” Consequently, if they were not in a “serious situation,” Consolvo often stepped aside at the conn and let his junior officers “handle the ship” so they
could gain experience. Rust and the other officers knew they had “a whole lot to learn,” but they did not find it a chore to be taught by Consolvo. Quite the contrary, they found it “a privilege to talk to him for five minutes about anything.” As for the enlisted men, Consolvo “never treated them differently than the officers” and showed that every man regardless of rank was important to him. This went far toward building good morale on Hull, where some of the officers and enlisted men became friends, talking about wives or girlfriends, families, home, hopes, and dreams as they stood their round-the-clock watches side by side at various stations on the ship.
Another of the young officers Consolvo set out to mentor was Lieutenant ( j.g.) Greil I. Gerstley, twenty-three, a five-foot-eleven, slender Philadelphian with a charming smile, dark curly hair, and “Jewish movie-star good looks.” Prepping at William Penn Charter School and graduating in 1941 from Cornell University, where he was president of Zeta Beta Tau—and known with other “natty ZBTs” as models of the “urbane, suave, genteel” man—Gerstley had grown up in a “privileged environment in terms of money and social status in Philadelphia’s Jewish community.” His father had made a fortune in liquor distribution and securities, and his mother came from a prominent Montgomery, Alabama, merchant family named Greil—hence his rather unusual first name. Gerstley, who had taken two years of Army ROTC in a field artillery unit at Cornell, applied for a commission in the Naval Reserve shortly after Pearl Harbor. In the months since his college graduation, Gerstley had been working as a clerk in his father’s securities firm, which held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. It was no secret that his father was grooming his son to take over the family’s businesses; however, any such talk would have to wait, for young Gerstley was eager to offer his “services to the country in this time of need.” Writing recommendation letters to the Navy were a Cornell English professor (“a young man of lively personality, good intellectual ability, and dependable moral character”), Cornell’s director of public information (“member of an old American family, steeped in the finest traditions of our land…his loyalty and dependability can be counted on 100 percent”), and a justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (“unimpeachable integrity…has physical courage, is ambitious to duty…a fine specimen of young American manhood”). Commissioned in March 1942, Gerstley wound up at Northwestern’s Midshipman School, too. Upon graduation, he drove a new Chrysler sedan to San Francisco on the first leg of a journey that took him nearly halfway around the world to meet his ship. The greenhorn ensign caught up with Hull in September 1942, losing his cover on deck to a stiff breeze and watching forlornly as his cap drifted in the water between the ship and pier. Notwithstanding that rookie move, Gerstley was soon writing glowing reports to friends and family about the Navy and his ship: “I am getting an enormous kick out of the Navy with plenty of thrilling experiences and fascinating times daily” and “I wouldn’t swap destroyer duty for anything else, except maybe for subs, but the folks wouldn’t like the latter.” At various times, Gerstley handled myriad duties on Hull—including gunnery, communications, and navigation—and his superiors found him to possess “good judgment” and a “cheerful disposition.”
Photographic Insert
Surprise attack on Pearl Harbor: “A day that will live in infamy.” u.s. navy
In front of battleship Pennsylvania, burned hulks of destroyers Downes and Cassin, fires which civilian worker and future Hull sailor Thomas Stealey fought. u.s. navy
The destroyer Hull (DD-350), commissioned in 1935, winner of 10 battle stars. U.S. NAVY
James A. Marks, Annapolis Class of 1938, the last commanding officer of Hull. U.S. NAVY
Lloyd Rust, Jr., reserve officer and Texas lawyer, Hull CIC officer. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Greil Gerstley, of Philadelphia, second in command of Hull, on the day of his September 1944 wedding in San Francisco to Eleanore Hyman. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
C. Donald Watkins, reserve officer from Columbus, Ohio, Hull torpedo officer. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Edwin B. Brooks, Jr., Hull sonar officer and “southern gentleman.” U.S. NAVY
Archie DeRyckere, “never been whipped” after four years in the fleet, Hull chief quartermaster. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
John “Ray” Schultz, boatswain’s mate and member of Hull crew since 1938. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Kenneth Drummond, Hull storekeeper who stood watches on the bridge. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Thomas Stealey, of Stockton, California, Hull fireman who as a civilian worker helped fight fires during the attack on Pearl Harbor. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Patrick Douhan, of Fresno, California, Hull sonarman. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Michael “Frenchy” Franchak, of Jermyn, Pennsylvania, Hull radarman. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Portia and John Kreidler, Hull chief sonorman, one month after their August 1944 wedding. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Carl T. Webb, an Oklahoma cowboy turned Hull seaman. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
The destroyer Monaghan (DD-354), commissioned in 1935, winner of 12 battle stars. U.S. NAVY
Joseph “Mother” McCrane, of Clementon, New Jersey, Monaghan water tender. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
L. Bruce Garrett, graduation photo, Annapolis class of 1938, the last commanding officer of Monaghan. U.S. NAVY
Joseph Guio, Jr., of West Virginia, Monaghan gunner’s mate. U.S. NAVY
Joseph Candelaria, Jr., of Bakersfi eld, California, Monaghan water tender. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
Four of the six survivors of Monaghan; from left, Evan Fenn, William F. Kramer, Doil Carpenter and James T. Story, being handed their leave papers by Ensign Maragaret Harrison upon their arrival at Los Angeles harbor. LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Last living survivor of Monaghan today: Evan Fenn, 84, of Saint David, Arizona. CHRIS DAVOBICH, SAN PEDRO VALLEY NEWS-SUN
As Christmas (1943) approached, Hull’s crew received word that they were heading for California, where for a few weeks they would take part in amphibious exercises off the coast. Hull pulled into San Francisco on December 21. There was insufficient time for leaves home or for a shipyard stay even though everyone knew the well-traveled ship “had to get some work done before long.” Nonetheless, the crew enjoyed a week’s worth of holiday liberties.
For some, the brief stateside visit was time enough to start a serious romance, as it was for Greil Gerstley. Asked by a local friend if he would agree to a blind date, Gerstley demurred, explaining that he wanted to “get a look at her first.” He went to the department store where his would-be date worked and “looked her over,” which Eleanore Hyman “greatly resented,” although not enough to turn down the handsome naval officer when he asked her out. The beautiful twenty-year-old brunette, who had attended Stanford University, and the debonair Philadelphian “fell in love very quickly.”
On January 13, 1944, Hull sailed with Task Force 53 (which included Monaghan) for the invasion of the Marshall Islands. Two weeks later, Hull was screening transports off Kwajalein, and more screening and patrol duties continued throughout February off Eniwetok and Majuro. Antisubmarine patrols could be “dull business,” but aboard Hull the routine would never again seem rote or mundane to men who had witnessed the sudden sinking by a single torpedo of Liscome Bay with its horrendous loss of life.
The next action for Hull came in March, when she joined the aircraft carrier Lexington (CV-16), two battleships, and several destroyers in the bombardment of enemy-held Mille Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Lexington, in commission for only a year, had already survived one near-fatal attack three months earlier off Kwajalein, when an enemy torpedo knocked out her steering gear and ruptured fuel tanks. Listing and ablaze, the crippled carrier made it to Pearl Harbor for repairs, while Tokyo Rose jubilantly reported her sunk with all hands. Painted dark blue and the only carrier not to wear camouflage colors, Lexington was soon dubbed the “Blue Ghost,” as Tokyo Rose would report the carrier sunk a second time in April during the devastating raid on the major Japanese base at Truk, where Hull once again stayed prote
ctively close to Lexington, untouched even as her aircraft downed seventeen enemy planes. Hull was also in Lexington’s company for the June 15 invasion of Saipan in the Marianas, during which the U.S. task force was attacked by waves of Japanese planes. Close on Lexington’s port quarter, Hull helped bring down an enemy dive bomber heading for the carrier “either to land or crash on it.” Lexington’s air group played a major role in the resultant Battle of the Philippine Sea (also known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot”) on June 19–20, during which the Japanese lost three carriers and 600 planes, some when they ditched at sea with nowhere to land after their carriers were sunk. While again emerging unscathed, the “Blue Ghost” for a third time was reported by Tokyo Rose to have been sunk during battle.
Hull had not seen the last of the Marianas, serving in the naval force for the invasion of Guam in July and afterward patrolling off the island for nearly two weeks. Then came the best news possible for the crew, who reacted with unbounded delight: they were scheduled for a major repair and refit at Puget Sound Navy Yard in Seattle, Washington. The long months of operations in the Pacific had worn out the ship, equipment and men alike.
Ray Schultz, the seaman who before the war had tried his best to get booted out of the Navy but succeeded only in being regularly demoted, was now on an opposite promotional path. He had made 1st class boatswain’s mate, considered the most versatile shipboard rate in the Navy. Masters of seamanship, boatswain’s mates perform almost any task in connection with deck maintenance: loading and securing cargo, setting gangplanks, standing security watches, small-boat operations, handling ropes, lines, and cables, and operating hoists, cranes, and winches. No captain of any Navy ship, large or small, would want to go to sea without qualified boatswain’s mates. Since Pearl Harbor, Schultz had gone from incurable cutup to indispensable sailor.
Down to the Sea Page 9