"Baka Jet Bomb"
The island of Okinawa was a mere 60 miles long by 2 to 18 miles wide in places. It's strategic worth for both sides cannot be under stated. For the Allies it was an absolute must that the island be taken. It was only 360 mile from Japan's shoreline and we needed it as part of the plans for the actual taking of the Japanese homeland itself. But we knew, as did the Japanese, that it would be the costliest battle of the war. If the Japanese would fight so tenaciously nearly to the last man for a little island such as Tarawa, We could only try to imagine what type of fight she would put up for an island that was so close to home.
The intellegence that we were able to collect showed that the bulk of the fighting would occur around the southern half of the island. Troop strength was estimated to be in the neighborhood of 65,000. We would later determine that the actual strength level was well over 110,000. The Japanese would depend highly on the effectiveness of the "Divine Wind" or as we knew them: Kamikaze.
The American forces that were utilized for the taking of Okinawa was an awesome armada of battle-hardened units. Admiral Ray Spruance's 5th Fleet was tasked with the job. Admiral Richmond Turner commanded Task Force 51 which was the landing forces consisted of half a million men, over 300 vessels and over 1,100 auxillary and landing vessel's. Task Force 58 consisted of 4 fast carrier groups along with a British carrier force commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings. The landing forces consisted of 7 Divisions or roughly 154,00 men.
The landing took place on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945. It was declared secured on July 2, 1945. American casualties were 49,151. We had lost 783 aircraft, 36 ships had been sunk tho none larger than a Destroyer and another 368 ships had been heavily damaged. The Japanese lost 110,00 men with only 7,400 surrendering. 10 major kamakaze attacks had been thrown against the fleet. With 1,900 sorties launched, the kamakaze's lost 1,465 aircraft and pilots. The total number of aircraft lost by the Japanese was a staggering 7,800 aircraft.
Thus endeth the historical aspect of my story.
Upon our arrival in Leyete, we were dumbstruck by the size of the armada that we were surrounded by. Every possible ship in commission was there from the largest class carrier's I'd ever seen, battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, destroyer escorts, subs and troop carrying vessels of all kinds. There were literly hundreds of them. We seemed to pale to insignificance in their presence but in the pending battle would prove to be a Godsend even though we didn't know it yet. After Okinawa, no one made snide remarks about a member of a tug boat.
We were immediately given a daunting task for a new tow. We would be picking up two HUGE barges of AV gas. These barges were so large, they had a small crew with living quarters on the fantail. We were given a 3 day head-start and told we were going to some island called Okinawa. With everything we had seen in way of preparations, we knew there must be one hell of a fight brewing on the horizon. And somehow, I knew we would be in the middle of it. Now, I don't know how that fleet passed us but when we arrived, they were there ready to start. Boats were in the water heading toward shore. I didn't know it at the time but found out shortly that this landing was a diversion. It must have worked because when they changed course, we were so close, we could see them on shore scrambling to change positions. About that time, the bombardment started and we couldn't see anymore activity on the beach.
We received orders to proceed to the northern part of the island and sit tight. It wasn't very long when we got our first exposure to the Kamikaze's. We had been warned about the threat of the kamikazie and their effectiveness. We knew from the word about the battle of Iwo Jima what a devistaing impact they had on the fleet both physically as well as mentally. To this day, I cannot come to terms or adeguately describe the "Man". It was one thing to me to be willing to die for my country. I was prepared to do that every day I was in a combat environment. But, the idea of a man climbing into the cockpit of an aircraft with the sole purpose in life of killing himself so as to take out as many of the enemy as he could, defies all reasoning. But that's just what I was witnessing. Just seeing them for the first time was both numbing and mind boggling. I guess those pilots didn't think a couple of barges was worth dying for because they left us alone. However, there were several other's that weren't so lucky. Seeing an aircraft just lazily go into a dive making no evasive manuevers what so ever until he was blown out of the sky or crashed into a surface ship was, at first, beyond all comprehension. After several weeks of witnessing these attacks going on constantly around you, they seemed to cease being an aircraft with a pilot and became a much hated weapon that you cheered when you saw it blown out of the sky and hated with more vigor when you saw one hit home.
We came through that first one ok but we were faced with a new problem that we had to deal with: "Suicide swimmers". Again this was something that wasn't talked about in the history books much but they were real enough for us because we had to defend against them and these guy's weren't so choosey. They would blow anything they could get on. No one, at the time, on our side, seemed to want the barges so we were stuck with them. So, there we sat with these barges holding, I don't know, a gazillion gallons of gas strung out on our tow cable. We tied the barges off side by side, issued Thompson machine guns to everybody with orders to shoot anything drifting in the water. That proved to be an unwise idea cause them fellows was burning up serious amounts of ammo. I don't know if they were just having a good time or were so paranoid they would lite off a full magazine at anything they saw (Real or unreal). We then decided to take 2 of the 3 men crew off the barge and work out a watch schedule. Whomever was on watch had a shotgun and a walkie talkie. One night, we got a frantic call from barge #1 that he needed help NOW. He neither sent any further messages nor would he answer so I grabbed a thompson, hopped on the boat and told the coxain to go. I had no idea what I was heading into so I guess you can imagine why my pucker factor was about .9 on a 1.0 scale. It took about 10 minutes to get there since receiving the message. When we arrived, it was dead silent and pitch dark. I started one handing it up the ladder with the thompson in the other. When I got to the top I wasn't ready for what I saw. It seems this swimmer with a backpack of explosives made his way up the ladder and when he got to the top, this young sailor stuck the shotgun in his face and pulled the trigger. Blew his head clean off his shoulders. Seeing the effects of a 12 guage shotgun to a human head at close range is something that never goes away and you never know when the memory will come back to haunt you. When the corpse fell, the kid grabbed his hands and fell with him and had a death grip on him. I had to climb over this headless corpse to get on deck and get to my man. The kid was froze in place.I very carefully removed the explosive pack being extremely careful not to touch the trigger wire. I deep sixed the pack into the drink and took my first breath.I then told the young fellow that he could let go now as we had pulled that Japanese's teeth (Removed the threat). Still, I had to slowly physically and orally coax him into letting go and that took a little while. When he finally came down off his adrenalin surge I asked him why he had a death grip on the guys hands. The kid answered: so that SOB couldn't pull the pin on that backpack. Now there was one dedicated young sailor. Either that or his survival instinct was sharp as a razor. When I got back to the ship, I explained to the skipper what had happened and voiced my opinion that the young sailor inquestion deserved to be written up for a medal for what he had done. The skipper concurred and the young lad was written up for a citation. I don't know if he was ever awarded one because I never saw him again. But take a moment to realize what he had done. By stopping that suicide swimmer, he stopped the detonation of seriously millions of gallons AV gas. By doing so, he prevented every ship in that harborage from being totally engulfed in flames and more than likely a significantly large portion of the northern portion of the island which we occupied. The amount of lives he saved that night could never be tallied but in my humble opinion, it would be well into the hundreds possibly the thousands.
After 3 days of babysitting those barges, we got a new set of order's and immediately, we were not a happy crew. It seems there was a shore battery on the side of a hill causing some problems. Our assignment was to cruise close in to shore and get this gun to take a shot or two at us. There was a cruiser off shore waiting to spot her smoke and take her out. It's not very reassuring to know that at the moment, your only worth is as bait and steaming back and forth waiting to get shot at, there were more than a few suggestions from the crew about going and finding the fleet commander and taking a shot at him so he would know how it felt to be a piece of expendable meat. I told you earlier about being willing to die from my country. This was a tad different. Somebody wanted me to die so some other guy could get a shot at the guy who killed us. I wasn't a happy puppy. God Bless the Japanese, as they were smart enough to let us slide for a better target. We were finally relieved and one of the remaining destroyers took up the assignment. One pass and that shore battery opened up and the cruiser got her spotting because in a very short time there was some tremendous explosions and the whole side of the hill erupted.
Our next assignment was another that we didn't relish but it had to be done. Besides, we would definitely be part of the war effort on this one and the added value was that we would be saving countless lives. We would be busy day and night with no foreseeable let up insight for weeks. With the skies blackened from the ack-ack and flack and the kamakizes buzzing around trying to find a way through it for a hit, we were to steam in, put a tow on one of numerous destroyers out of commission and tow them to a safe place. There were so many ships needing a tow, they only got one chance at hooking up from us and all the other tugs. We would come in close and shoot them a line. If by the time we took up the tow and they weren't hooked up, we kept steaming to the next victim. I know it was frustrating for those few left behind but I think word got out in the fleet fast because as time progressed fewer and fewer ships missed getting hooked up in time. There was only one exception to this rule and that was relating to sailors that we observed floating in the water. We still would not stop but we did have men posted who would toss a ring to the man, haul him close to the ladder and bring him on board. We NEVER left a sailor floating.
There was one instance that was to cause our crew a great deal of grief and perhaps some haunting memories as well.When I think of it, I try to write it off as the fortunes of war and let it go at that but the memory still haunts me. During one of our many trips to hook up a tow, wee shot a line to a destroyer. As we steamed on and came to the time for the tow, this destroyer hadn't made it and as business as usual, we steamed on to our next victim. We shot them a line and they managed to get hooked up in time. As we were steaming to get out of the area, we saw the first destroyer take a couple of kakizie hits and down she went, fast. All we could do was suck it up and keep on steaming. This was not the time nor the place to let emotions creep in.
On another occassion which had a comical side to it was during a run where I was working between the towing line and the engine room. I noticed one of my crew: OL Tubby, scrambling around on deck. You rarely saw tubby on deck because first, his general quarters station was below deck and second, we called him tubby because he was shall I say somewhat HEAVY and he always had trouble getting through the hatches. Well, here he was, stuck on deck scrambling around with no apparrent objective in mind. During all this chaos surrounding me, I found myself standing there just watching him. I guess I was kinda stunned for a bit. Then, I see him take off towards an unmanned 20 mm gun. When he got there, he tried to strap in but the belt was way to small for his girth. So Tubby wedged himself into the gun and he started looking around. These were the older model guns that only had iron sights but used tracer rounds so you could bring them on target. Tubby picks up on a kamakizie heading in our general direction and opens up. I watched him march them tracers right into that SOB and damned if he didn't put about 20 rounds into her. She bellied up and splashed in. I was hooting and hollering and tubby was trying to jump all around but he was stuck in the gun. Skipper hollered down: Good shootin Tubby, while your stuck there, get me another one.
It was a frantic time for all. The kamikazes keep comming in droves. There were constant explosions, planes being blown out of the sky or crashing into the sea or hitting our surface combatants. If you were on deck and not wearing a helmet and one of those thick life jackets, you became a casualty from the buckets of shrapnel falling from the sky. I can't remember how many ships we towed out of harms way but we were making 2-3 trips a day, Even the ships we towed stayed in the fight. We would tow them to a spot and tie several of them off. Once that was completed, every gun that was still in commission joined the fight. It was a constant fight day and night. I also saw something else that's not spoken much about in the history books. The Japanese had developed a rocket bomb that was highly effective because only a head on direct hit would stop them. Their bomber's would drop them from an altitude that our guns couldn't reach. The pilot would pick a target, line it up and fire the rocket. Virtually a hit everytime.
I never saw one stopped but there was one that came in on too low an angle, missed his target and skipped like a rock all the way ashore. Some Marines ran up on it, smashed the little cockpit and knocked out the pilot who was trying to commit hari-kari.
As an afterthought here, it wasn't a very smart move on the part of the Japanese to leave the tugs alone because if they had targeted us and depleted our number's that would have left a whole lot of targets that were dead in the water and we would have lost many more ships. A tactical blunder on their part that I'm pretty grateful for.
On one trip we got orders to go pull one of those converted LCI's (Landing Craft Infantry) that had gotten herself hung up on a reef. It had been converted to a rocket launcher and had a full load when we got there. The first problem we noticed upon our arrival came in two parts. First, the LCI was fully loaded. Second, some mortar teams on shore was shooting at her trying to find the range. This was not good. We had to get in close to rig for the tow and if the Japanese found the range, there was enough explosives on that boat to take both of us out. We got in as close as we could and sent a boat over with an officer on board. We had a line to pull a larger one that would then pull over our 3" steel towing line. Our officer was sent word to strip the ship so they started firing off their rockets. That was a real sight. It seemed like it took only a couple of moments to send 400 to 500 rockets down range. When they dumped everything they could over the side, as an afterthought our skipper sent orders to take off the crew as well. After delivering one boat load and returning for the rest, their young skipper refused to leave his ship. As the Japanese was starting to find the range our skipper was getting a bit pissed off and sent word back to remove the skipper either under his own power or horizontal. Our skipper's orders were followed to the tee and we hoisted aboard one extremely agitated Lieuutenant.
We then pulled ahead, dropped an anchor and backed down until we had it set. Those boys on shore were getting to close for comfort as we had shells landing all around us. The shipper ordered full power on the engines and we fired up the towing machine and the anchor winch as well.We had everything aboard pulling with everything she had in her. Our tow just began to budge and we could see success in sight when there was one tremendous explosion throwing everybody to the deck. The LCI was gone. I don't know what had happened but one of their rounds must have hit the magazine. Only thing I could come up with. Anyways, with all the power and torque we had on that tow, when she blew, our towing cable including the davits the cable was attached to flew clear over the bridge and landed in the water close to the bow. At the same moment, we shot forward and dug our way through the coral reef. As a result, we bent our prop and the shaft was out of line. We could only make 1/3 speed. Anything over that and everything aboard shook like hell. We were at that point , out of the fight. We were ordered to find a location to get in a drydock for repairs.
So, off we went in search of a port that had a drydock where we could get repairs to our shaft and screw. Everywhere we found land with a port, it was full of ships under repair with other ships waiting. Being just a mere tug, we were pretty low on the priority list. This didn't please the skipper to much so, we kept searching the Pacific looking for a place that would take care of us. Would you believe we finally wound up in Aukland, New Zealand.
© 1997 ervd@hotmail.com
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