War Stories II (59 page)

LIEUTENANT THOMAS (TOM)
STEVENSON, USN
Aboard USS
Samuel B. Roberts
25 October 1944

As the communications officer and a deck officer, I stood eight hours of deck watch a day and decoded all the messages that came in. We were aboard the smallest of the major war vessels and I would have to prepare the messages for the appropriate officers on the ship and supervise the general operations of the radio room and the signal apparatus.

Taffy 3 screened for anti-submarine and for anti-aircraft purposes.

Planes were taking off from the carriers of Taffy 3 and were supposed to put up combat air patrol to protect the ships from air attack, and to launch strikes at the beach every morning at dawn to support the troops with bombing and strafing.

The planes would come back and re-arm, go back, and make a second strike during the day, and sometimes a third strike. Meanwhile, we'd keep a combat air patrol of six fighters above our own formation to try to ward off any attacking Japanese planes.

At night the radio for TBS signal skips, and you can hear it sometimes many miles away. So I heard the reports of the Battle of Surigao Strait during the night. We were aware that we had won a terrific victory.

Suddenly, the “general quarters” alarm rang for everybody to report to their battle stations. The Japanese ships had spotted us. We could only
see the tops of the masts of the
Yamato
, the
Kongo
, and big battleships. They were over fourteen miles away. We didn't know they were coming after us until they opened fire.

Evidently, they were on their way to Leyte Gulf, where the troop transports were. They just stumbled on us.

Well, against the battleships, there was no defense because they were so far away and their guns could reach us, while we couldn't even shoot a quarter of the way at them. So our only defense was to lay smoke around the carriers

As they closed on us, we had hoped that we'd be able to fire on them, but it took a long time before they came within range. Then we could use our five-inch guns, which we did. But our main weapons to really cause some damage were our torpedoes. But unfortunately the destroyer escorts only carried three each, whereas the destroyers had ten. So as things got worse, the admiral ordered the “small boys” to form up for a torpedo attack. The “small boys” were the destroyers, and the “small, small boys” were the destroyer escorts.

The destroyers were the
Hoel
, the
Johnston
, and the
Heermann
. We saw the
Hoel
and the
Johnston
form up for a torpedo attack, but the
Heermann
had not yet shown up, so we just fell in behind the
Johnston
and the
Hoel
.

We saw the
Johnston
starting to get hit pretty badly. We were able to go all the way in to fire at about 6,000 yards. We were tracking a heavy cruiser. I don't know whether it was the
Tone
or the
Chikuma,
but we felt that we made a hit.

I was up on the signal bridge when we saw the
Johnston
the last time. She was really shot up, but she was still firing and still steaming along pretty well. But all of a sudden she got into the smoke and I never saw her again.

The captain came on the squawk box and indicated that our chances of surviving were not great, but we were going to do a lot of damage to the enemy. John McClair and I were good friends, so we were up on deck together, and we shook hands and said good luck to each other.

The first real hit that I could feel was when a cruiser shell went through the main deck and through the side of the CIC where we were and into the fire room, below the bridge structure.

It was a panic, because everything went out and you could hardly breathe. Everyone ran to get out. I had a talker's helmet and a voice megaphone in front of me. I had a hard job getting them to get out, so I got out there a little late myself. Thank God that I did, because as I looked down on the main deck I saw a lot of bodies strewn around.

First thing I had to do was to go back down into the radio room where the decoding machine was and get the decoding wheels and throw them overboard.

Then I was supposed to blow up the ECM, which was a top-secret coding machine. I didn't put the hand grenade in the side of it, as I was supposed to do, because I was afraid I'd set it off too soon and kill myself. One of the enlisted men had a submachine gun, and he shot the thing up for me. It was just as good a job as having the hand grenade do it, I guess.

There was a safe right outside my room with the secret documents and all the invasion plans. They were all in weighted bags, and we each got several bags and threw them overboard.

The last one I threw overboard didn't sink. I'd failed to put weights inside it. The captain said, “You'd better get that bag.” So I retrieved the bag and took it with me.

They taught us in communication school that if you didn't destroy the electric coding machine and the wheels, you'd better go down with the ship, because you would be court-martialed and be in more trouble than if you died.

Then I decided to go up on the bridge. It was crowded up there because everybody had gathered there.

I went back to the signal bridge, right behind the navigating bridge. And then a big explosion hit aft, and the blast came forward and knocked us all down. The signal bag caught on fire from the shrapnel. But the ship was still steaming, although they only had one fire room and two engines running.

But then another big explosion struck aft on the port side, and with that, everything went out. The ship just stopped, a big hole in the side from the last explosion. After that there was no power and nothing much you could do.

The air ejection for the guns had failed and the aft gun exploded. A powder bag “cooked off” in the breech of the gun because there was no air-cooling coming through. So that gun was finished. And the forward five-inch gun had run out of ammunition.

The captain decided to carry out the destruction drill and abandon ship. That's when we started to get off. I knew if I got off that ship alive that I was going to live.

A group attached themselves to scaffolding that floated off the deck. I swam out to them, maybe 400 yards away, and tried to persuade them to get off that thing, and join us where we had a floater net.

We had some water and malted milk tablets. They had nothing. We thought that they'd be better with us, and we thought as a larger group we'd be noticed. But they didn't want to leave. They insisted on staying on that scaffolding. We took one man who was badly burned back to our group, but the rest of them refused to get off. They were never found. We learned later that they had been attacked by sharks. There were about sixteen of them.

In the beginning, everybody was delighted just to be alive, and thinking that we'd get picked up right away. Shortly after the ship sank, a plane came over us. He buzzed us two or three times, and then wiggled his wings to signal us. We felt sure that we were going to be rescued then.

Unfortunately he couldn't land on his carrier, and eventually landed in Tacloban where the airfield was semi-operational. By then he'd forgotten the exact coordinates of where we were. Evidently he was struggling to find a place to land and had nothing to write with.

As the second night approached, things really deteriorated, and it was every man for himself. We really started to lose hope, and didn't see any way we were going to be picked up. I thought, “I'd better make peace with the Almighty.”

The oil slick helped us though. It kept the sharks away from us. We had shark scares, but that heavy oil, almost like tar, kept the sharks away and it coated you from the sun. We were right on the equator, and during the day the sun is brutal.

Well, we were about on our last legs, and then we saw these small vessels on the horizon, coming towards us. We were sure they were Japanese. But they were LCIs: American patrol craft. But they had their guns trained on
us,
because
we
looked like Japanese to them. We were screaming, “We're Americans, we're Americans!” That's when they turned their bullhorn on and asked about the World Series. Fortunately somebody knew who won.

So it was like a madhouse. They had to pull us out of the water. But it was great joy, I'll tell you.

I think that we prevented the Japanese from taking over the Gulf and isolating the troops ashore. If that had happened, I think the invasion would have been a flop. I mean, eventually it would have taken place, but I think that Taffy 3 kept things going so that the invasion was kept right on schedule.