Tin Can Titans

by John Wukovits

  Starr and his shipmates had to endure the thought that, to obtain a fix on their targets, their skipper had to move Nicholas in close to the island and act as bait for enemy batteries. For two days Nicholas and the other destroyers operated at point-blank range, taunting the enemy into firing by slowing their speed and waiting for the telltale blast from shore to indicate their target.

  The exhausting work continued until sunset, when the unit returned north to Subic Bay. Despite arriving near midnight, the crews could not rest, for they had to refuel and restock the ammunition they had expended during the day in order to be ready for the next day’s action. “As a result,” wrote Starr, “we hit the sack about 0100 [1:00 a.m.] for an all-too-brief two- to three-hour sleep.”

  Back the next morning, the crews remained at battle stations throughout the long daylight hours. They ate breakfast and supper during the trips to and from Corregidor, and snacked when they could at stations. “I don’t remember showering during those four days,” recalled Starr. “I didn’t want to give up my sleep time. Besides, who cared what we smelled like. We always smelled of sweat and diesel fuel smoke anyway.”40

  Crews enjoyed a front-row seat to one of the war’s most exciting spectacles when, forty-five minutes after a February 15 pre-invasion bombardment, paratroopers dropped on Corregidor from Army transport planes. Soldiers dangled from white chutes, while red, green, and black canopies gently bore equipment to the ground. A short distance away, awestruck Nicholas and Fletcher crew watched the multicolored display, which was more reminiscent of a balloon-filled festival sky than of a bloody battleground.

  “Paratroopers began landing for one hour at 8:30 AM, then small landing crafts went in at 1030,” Seaman Chesnutt wrote in his diary. “Heavy firing met them. More paratroopers after noon. We went in to 2,000 yards firing, some near misses on us and no hits. We silenced a few shore batteries.” As the Army advanced across the island, Fletcher and her companions swept for mines, exploding more than one hundred. “One mine exploded between Jenkins and us in close to the beach of Corregidor late this afternoon,” noted Chesnutt.41

  When winds blew some of the paratroopers off track and into the bay, PT boats helped the destroyers retrieve the soldiers. Most, however, successfully dropped onto the island and overwhelmed the Japanese garrison, making men on the decks of Fletcher and Nicholas proud to again see Old Glory fluttering over an island that meant so much to the United States.

  Over the ensuing ten days the destroyers provided support as Army units seized three other islands in Manila Bay. By mid-March, once Caballo, El Fraile, and Carabao had been secured, the bay was firmly in MacArthur’s hands, and Allied attention could be shifted north of the Philippines. The Nicholas crew celebrated the progress by staging a beer and swimming liberty on an island off the mouth of Subic Bay.

  Doc Ransom and La Vallette would not be a part of that. After nearly three months undergoing repairs, on May 2 the destroyer left Subic Bay for what the men hoped would be the long journey home. “Departed from Subic Bay at 1130 [11:30 a.m.] for Pearl Harbor (!) via Guam and the Marshall Islands,” wrote Doc Ransom. “Been waiting for this day a very long time.” Three weeks later his ship, still showing signs of the mine’s explosion, arrived at Pearl Harbor, where Ransom and his shipmates anchored to an emotional reception. “Arrived at P.H. at 0800 [8:00 a.m.] and they gave us a five gun salute from the shore guns,” wrote Ransom on May 22. “CinCPac [Admiral Nimitz] sent us a message as we entered saying ‘Welcome to Pearl. The battle record of the La Vallette is an inspiration to all hands. Hearty Congratulations.’” Ransom’s fears that the ship might be repaired in Hawaii and quickly returned to the fighting were allayed with the news that they would remain at Pearl Harbor only two days before heading home.

  “Underway at 0930 [9:30 a.m.] for San Francisco!!” he added on May 24, not even trying to hide his excitement. “Left Pearl with our homeward bound pennant flying and our whistle and siren screeching. We will arrive in San Francisco on May 30th.”

  Six days later, after a crew accustomed to tropical heat slowly adjusted to the surprisingly cold temperatures, the coast of California appeared on the horizon, bringing with it welcome leave with family for the crew while their ship received further repairs. “Passed under Golden Gate Bridge at 0840 [8:40 a.m.],” wrote Doc Ransom. “Left with the agriculture inspector and went to San Jose by train. Home Sweet Home!!” Quartermaster Johnson wrote his mother, “This has been a great day—one that we have waited for quite some time—one that we have often dreamed and thought about. Yes today was the day that we returned back to the U.S.A.”42

  Doc Ransom had come back to home and family, at least until La Vallette was again ready for battle, but the remaining ships of Desron 21, now a severely depleted unit, continued to fight in the Pacific. Of the twelve destroyers that were members of Desron 21 throughout the war, only half remained, including the original trio of O’Bannon, Fletcher, and Nicholas. Three had been sunk in the Solomons, while La Vallette, Radford, and Hopewell had been knocked out of action in the Philippines.

  While Ransom and his shipmates reunited with loved ones, their compatriots in the Southwest Pacific enjoyed no such respite. Islands named Iwo Jima and Okinawa, filled with Japanese soldiers imbued with the desire to halt what so far had been an inexorable American drive toward the Home Islands, awaited.

  Orvill Raines and the Howorth were about to find out just how determined those enemy defenders were.

  CHAPTER 10

  KAMIKAZE CARNAGE

  It was hard not to like Orvill Raines. The Howorth yeoman loved a good joke, and it did not bother him that his shipmates teased him because of the long letters he wrote to his wife, Ray Ellen, or the lipstick imprints she left on her letters to him. His love for her was open and deep, and shipmates joshed him not because they despised the man but because they knew how real his passion was for his wife.

  Born in Oklahoma on September 6, 1918, James Orvill Raines was the youngest of seven children. His father died before Orvill was out of high school, and when his mother remarried and moved to Arkansas, Raines chose instead to live with his sisters in Dallas. He settled into a job at the Dallas Morning News, quickly rising to reporter status.

  He met Ray Ellen on a blind date in April 1939 and knew right away he had found the perfect match. “I stuck my head inside an automobile and saw something wonderful, fresh and beautiful that smiled,” he wrote in one of his many letters to Ray Ellen, later to be collected in a volume and beautifully edited by Professor William McBride. “I was smitten in the solar plexus and a curious funny ache has been there ever since.”1 The pair dated for a year before marrying in June 1940.

  The war disrupted their life together. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in November 1942, was assigned to the new destroyer Howorth, and left for the Pacific in August 1944. Before departing, he and Ray Ellen agreed to continue the practice they had started shortly after marrying. Each night the couple gave each other what they called their “official good night,” usually a passionate kiss, but sometimes a bit more. Orvill vowed to continue the practice no matter where Howorth went, timing his imaginary kiss to coincide with her nighttime in Dallas. Far away in the South Pacific, he often had to mutter his good night in midday, frequently in the mess hall.

  As a yeoman, Raines had a station on the bridge, where he recorded events that involved the skipper and other officers. The ship stopped first at Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal before reaching Humboldt Bay, New Guinea, in September. “We get closer to battle each day,” he wrote Ray Ellen on September 12. “And as we approach, the men are withdrawing more to themselves. Conversation goes on as before but it is conversation between touchy men.”2

  Raines was happy, at least, to see an old friend. Torpedoman 3/c Glenn Murray had been with O’Bannon through the November 1942 battles off Guadalcanal, the countless runs up the Slot, and the major surface engagements in and around Kula Gulf. Raines enjoyed sharing thoughts with Murray whenever the two ships
were anchored together, and he was surprised when Murray complained that he missed his former skipper, Commander MacDonald, and that MacDonald’s replacement, Commander R. W. Smith, failed to measure up. Raines wanted to experience combat before he formed a final opinion of his skipper, Commander Edward S. Burns.

  Those experiences arrived rapidly once Howorth joined Desron 21 for the Philippine campaign, where kamikazes and shore bombardments were common. “Darling, the ‘West Side’ [of Leyte Island] is beautiful,” he wrote Ray Ellen on December 9 while involved with the Mindoro landings. “We weave through the numerous small islands, continually changing course. Always uncertain what lies beyond the next point.” When kamikazes attacked nearby ships, as they did so often in the restricted waters off Leyte Island, Raines and his shipmates encouraged other crews with shouts: “Kill the bastards” and “Come on you guys, hit ’em.”3

  Raines was at his station early one morning when a shadow loomed off the starboard side. He looked out as a destroyer limped into port, her superstructure a twisted mass of metal from absorbing kamikaze blows. Raines could only imagine the fear that must have engulfed that crew as the pilot barreled toward them at high speed with the sole intent of killing them. Those men served on the same size ship as Raines and completed the same tasks, held similar hopes for survival and nurtured the common dream of reuniting with loved ones as he did; yet for some, at least, those hopes and dreams had ended in an instant of fiery destruction. It was hard for Raines not to wonder about the fate of the man at the same duty station Raines held. He assumed Howorth might face a similar ordeal, but also remembered the experience of O’Bannon, a destroyer that since late 1942 had survived the worst the enemy could throw at her. Maybe his luck would match that of his buddy Glenn Murray.

  Raines’s first encounter with kamikazes occurred on December 15, landing day at Mindoro, when three aircraft attacked his destroyer. Gunfire enveloped the first kamikaze in flames but, according to Howorth’s ship history, “two ‘Zekes’ consecutively dived at this ship through heavy anti-aircraft fire.”4

  Seaman 1/c Russell Bramble stood near the captain that day as the port wing lookout. After entering the Navy in the fall of 1943, the native of Hastings, Nebraska, had helped put the ship in commission eight months earlier, and he now faced the most trying moments of his young military career. Bramble knew that the kamikaze pilots did not just attempt to hit his ship but, more precisely, tried to smash into the bridge, right where he happened to be posted. “What the pilots wanted to do was aim for the bridge where all the controls were,” he said years later. “It happened so fast that we had no chance to be scared” at the time, but he realized that he operated at the center of the enemy’s bull’s-eye. “The kamikazes came in real low, where the radar couldn’t pick them up so good. We were closer to land and the captain was maneuvering the ship, but they came in so fast and just blew up.”5

  Commander Burns ordered hard left and right rudders to avoid the oncoming kamikazes, which, according to Raines, “came in like a hornet.” One barely missed the aft smokestack and splashed in the water on the starboard side so close to Raines that parts of the wing and fuselage flew near him. As the second charged toward the bridge, the officer of the deck and another officer stood halfway outside the bridge so they could shout the range and probable direction.

  “As he flew closer and closer, bearing down right at them, I never saw such fear on anyone’s face,” Orvill wrote Ray Ellen of the men around him. The officers shouted “duck” only three seconds before the plane crashed feet from the destroyer, hurling a torrent of water right near Raines, “and the ship gave a mighty heave and groan, twisting and staggering like a bull clouted with a hammer.” Raines looked down to find a piece of the Japanese aircraft near his feet. When shells from Howorth ruptured the third kamikaze’s gas tank, it sprayed “the entire ship top to bottom, bow to stern.” The plane smashed forward and bounced off the port side of the forecastle, scattering wreckage all over, including “a piece of the Jap’s cheekbone picked up by the medical officer.”

  Raines now had evidence of his skipper’s skills. During the attack Burns stood on the bridge, shouting his orders to ensure that everyone around him heard his commands, and weaved the ship to port and starboard to avoid taking a direct hit. It was comforting to know that the ship had a capable commander, one whose talents could increase the crew’s odds for survival, but some of those damaged and sunken vessels had had gifted captains as well. Luck would also have to be on his side.

  Raines wrote Ray Ellen, “I will admit that after it was over, little Orvill was nervous as hell” because “I know those devils were aiming at me personally.” He continued, “Honey, they turned right at us and to every man on the ship, it looked like they were after them personally. The feeling of chance and uncertainty was almost unbearable.” A combination of good fortune and Burns’s talents saved Howorth, but two LSTs near them were sunk. O’Bannon, with his buddy Glenn Murray, operated close by, her antiaircraft gun crews joining those of Howorth to prevent the planes from hitting either ship. “It seems his ship is always nearby. Almost every move we’ve made, he has been right with us.”6

  The crews returned from the Mindoro operation without suffering serious casualties, but they were worn down. “As a result of the operations of the past twelve days, the crew is tired; not so much physically as mentally, from repeated strain,” stated O’Bannon’s war diary on December 18.7 They had avoided serious harm, and for a brief interlude the active phase of their fighting was over, but the torments and anxieties associated with combat accompanied them day after day. The enemy’s guns and the kamikazes might have faded for the moment, but the fears remained.

  A third assault in January 1945 took Raines north of Manila for the landings in Lingayen Gulf. According to Raines, the grueling Philippine operations, which followed on the heels of Howorth’s work off New Guinea, made even some of the roughest characters aboard homesick. The absence of mail for almost a month deepened their melancholy.

  Home would have to wait. The Japanese first needed to be overcome at a series of Pacific locations, each undoubtedly offering fierce resistance, before the Americans could launch the invasion everyone feared—the final assault of the Home Islands. Two of those locations, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, now beckoned.

  “We Never Got Much Sleep”

  Raines and his shipmates would not miss the Philippines, where, according to the ship’s history, “much of that time had been spent at general quarters repelling air attacks.”8 They had seen enough of kamikazes and bombardments, but they gloomily concluded that their next objective, Iwo Jima, would undoubtedly offer more of the same.

  In early February the Howorth was temporarily assigned to the Fifth Fleet to be part of the naval element supporting the Marine landings at Iwo Jima, a place ever since associated with the flag raising atop Mount Suribachi. As soon as Commander Burns took Howorth out of Saipan on February 16 to escort the troop transports to the island, he announced to the crew their destination. “You never knew where you were going until you had left your port,” said Seaman Bramble. “When the captain said, ‘Iwo Jima,’ we said, ‘Where’s that?’”9

  Admiral Nimitz needed Iwo Jima, located in the Volcano Islands seven hundred miles northwest of Saipan, as an air base for operations against the Japanese. Airstrips there could offer an emergency landing field for B-29 bombers on their return trips to Saipan after hitting Japan, a place to house the fighters that escorted those bombers, and a base from which to strike the next target, Okinawa.

  Early in the morning of February 19, after sweeping for submarines west of Mount Suribachi, Howorth took station seven miles out from the island while battleships and cruisers blasted Japanese positions in the heaviest pre-invasion bombardment of the war. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, Raines watched mammoth sixteen-inch battleship batteries hurl projectiles that rose in an arc before descending on the Japanese. American fighter aircraft so dotted the sky that he feared some might collid
e, and when he gazed northward, he saw shells mercilessly pounding Mount Suribachi.

  A few hours later, landing craft began ferrying in the first of what by nightfall would be thirty thousand Marines. Howorth’s work then began in earnest, and would last twenty-three days. That time was described in the ship’s history as a taxing period, “without anchoring or mooring, being underway continuously.”10

  Their daily missions never varied. They patrolled the sea about Iwo Jima for enemy surface craft or submarines, and moved closer to the beaches to provide gunfire support for Marines advancing on enemy positions. “We bombarded Iwo Jima for sixteen days,” said Seaman Bramble. “During the day we fired at Japanese positions, and at night we shot starshells for the Marines so they could see the enemy. We never got much sleep as we were going day and night.”11

  Raines, Bramble, and the crew expected kamikazes to again attack their ship, possibly in larger numbers than the Philippine onslaught, but few aerial threats interrupted their operations. “I was surprised that there were no kamikazes,” said Seaman Bramble. “At night you could see a lot of action farther out at sea where the fleet was keeping the kamikazes away.” While a handful of planes sneaked in to damage two ships and sink one escort carrier, earlier American air strikes against Japanese airfields on Honshu drastically reduced their overall impact.

  During Howorth’s sojourn off Iwo Jima, the ship conducted eight bombardments that lasted twenty-four hours apiece, each within range of enemy gunfire, as well as briefer shellings on other days. Through his binoculars, Bramble watched Marine units and tanks engaging the enemy, turning to flamethrowers and artillery to gouge the defenders from their pillboxes and nests. “I saw one Jap gun emplacement get plastered. Tracers were going right into it and it just blew up.”12 Bramble said the ship moved so close to Iwo Jima’s shore that the enemy once fired a thirty-caliber weapon at them.