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USS Phoenix CL - 46

Sailor:

Service Dates=MAY 1941 TO 1947

His Brother

I was a boilermaker on the PHOENIX CL46 we had one of the beat crews in the navy to my opinion trained & ets. Even with all the troubles of war the navy was part of the happiest days of my life.I was a lad of 17 yrs.when i enterd the NAVY but came out a man well trained for life.

Sailor=

Service Dates=1941-1945

Yes, we were ordered to return to the buoy, „You were not given

permission!!‰ I think it was the Chief Boatswain&Mac226;s Mate who screamed, „YOU

SONS OF BITCHES, WE&Mac226;RE TRYING TO SAVE OUR ASS, SOME BASTARDS ARE SHOOTING AT

US!‰

I distinctly remember the DD Pom Pom guns, borrowed from England and being

tested. They must have hit the nose of a torpedo which the plane, at some

50 to 75 foot altitude, was carrying. It disintegrated.

I also recall later hearing the ship's crew scuttlebutt of a rather new

Ensign being chewed out that morning; „MISTER, THIS IS NOT THE NAVY OF JOHN

PAUL JONES, WHEN ALL COMBUSTIBLES NOT SECURED WERE THROWN OVERBOARD!‰ when

he had ordered the starboard mahogany gangway jettisoned!

I do recall Lundquist &Mac246; he was Quartermaster alongside my Cape Cod neighbor

Art Lundstrom.

Watertight doors were shut as per GQ standard procedure; one man, doing 20

and with a big gut became stuck in the round manhole of the horizontal

hatch. Men, in a rush to get topside shoved hard and a number above pulled

by his arms. He was pulled thru but had some skin scraped off. (If I recall

correctly he was transferred off the ship three days later when we returned

to Pearl.)

Arriving topside I viewed the repair ship Vestal slowly steaming past with a

large hole at about her second deck slightly aft of port quarter with smoke

coming from the hole. She was run aground ever so carefully at Aiea not too

A First Class Gunner&Mac226;s Mate (he passed on a few years ago) drafted me as

pointer on a 3" 50 (the two, port and starboard were no good as anti air.)

As I recall, he had us fire at two distant planes which were at low

attitude, when someone shouted "DON'T SHOOT, THEY ARE OURS"; said GM

responded "@$##! THEM, THEY FLY DON'T THEY?" Some other shipmates (I think;

John Rosati, Don Manning*, Frank Ritter and others of the 5" Battery) and I

pulled down the awnings and opened the ready boxes, two for each of the four

guns with 25 rounds in each box. That was the ammo that I will tell you

about later. Shortly after that, I with others, was at the splinter shield

watching for planes. I was about two feet to the right of the muzzle when

some nut squeezed the trigger&Mac247;-one went off and believe me, a 3" 50 is damn

loud.

Everything was local control that day. On our way out of the channel a PBY,

some 200 feet above and coming straight towards us, signaling „SUB IN

CHANNEL‰. I at that time was on a 50 cal and observed a DD coming up on our

starboard side, siren wailing to let us know he was passing. Tom, he passed

us with some six to eight feet to starboard &Mac246; I do not exaggerate! He

passed us and headed for some disturbance ahead, dropping two charges,

obviously set shallow. They went off and we were so close by then that our

foredeck was drenched by the blast. A minute or two later, we saw two to

three waterspouts about a half mile to starboard. A sub had fired „fish‰ at

us, but they exploded on the outer reefs.

As per the computer picture you sent, we were doing only a crawl, bodies in

water and passing thru the channel about opposite the drydock where the BB

Pennsylvania was with the two DDs. Someone spotted a man in water; a line

was tossed, he grabbed same and same and some 8, 10, 15 (who knows exactly)

men ran down the deck with the line. I still think that he was pulled clear

out of the water in such a rush that he didn't touch the side of the ship.

His name was Waters GM 1/C from one of the destroyers head of the

Pennsylvania. He had been blown out of his shoes, thru the air, over the

side of the drydock and CAME TO IN THE CHANNEL&Mac247;you figure out the distance!!

A day or two later the ship's doctor discovered that that sharp pain in

Water's buttock was from a needle-like piece of shrapnel.

A bit later, passing what was left of the docks, we heard from a sailor one

of a number there, who shouted "GO GET THE SONS OF BITCHES!" The sub net

signaled „C-L-O-S-I-N-G N-E-T -- S-U-B-S" Phoenix replied "COMING THRU"

again;"CLOSING NET"; we replied: "OPEN OR WE CUT IT"; we got out together

with two 4-pipe light cruisers and I believe four or five DD&Mac226;s. As soon as

we cleared the channel, we picked up speed and vacated the area.

I'll always remember that evening when we finally had „chow". Our cooks just

tossed whatever they had at hand into the galley kettle and turned the steam

on, resulting in one of the most appetizing bowls of stew I ever enjoyed.

No one went below the second and third decks that night and for one or two

other nights until the captain put out orders that „2nd and 3rd decks must

be kept clear &Mac246; go to your bunk compartments!‰

I wont go into details about the next three to four months, but operating

out of Freemantle sometime in March/April of 1942, we sortied (that&Mac226;s

Navyspeak for getting underway) out and into the Indian Ocean to, as we

heard later, test our 5‰ 25 Cal. Secondary Battery. We fired some 50

rounds &Mac246; some set for 5 second fuses. NOT ONE WORKED AS FLAK, NOT ONE

EXPLODED ON IMPACT! Then another 50 rounds were fired &Mac246; ZILCH! The only

result was that we, the gunnery gang, had to sponge out and clean all gun

barrels &Mac246; two on starboard and two on port!

I won&Mac226;t bother you with the details as to disposal of „bad‰ ammo and later

replacement with „good‰ ammo. The crud was put on a barge to be sunk some

five miles off shore. Some 20 months later, after lots of operation as

„MacArthur&Mac226;s Navy‰ (I met him personally when he put his hand on my

shoulder, telling me how important my work was) in the SW Pacific where we

fired some 500 plus rounds at Jap shore defenses with no return fire, only

to find out we knocked out coconut logs painted black, we found ourselves in

the Philadelphia Naval Yard. We went to the ammo ship for replacement; some

100 rounds were taken aboard when W.G. Winchell suspected something out of

whack. Quickly returning from the Gunnery Office with the book, then

Winchell erupted with prime Navy parlance - IT WAS THE AMMO THAT WAS TO BE

DUMPED SOME TWO YEARS AGO!.

*Note: Don manning, on liberty in Perth, Australia, at a restaurant ate 12

fried eggs in one hour! He and Ritter passed away some time ago.

Tom;;;;More reminiscing;

I do not recall the date or the month; however it was sometime during, I

believe, 1944 while my ship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, CL 46, Light Cruiser was

anchored in Manus Island Harbor of the Admiralty Islands Group, South West

Pacific during operations against the Japanese that I and my assistant were

attending to required routine cleaning, oiling, and lubrication where

necessary of number 3 gun of the main deck secondary battery. Number 5 gun

of the battery was a short distance of twenty-five to thirty feet aft, to

the rear of gun 3 with a third gun, number 7 an equi-distance aft of number

5, with responsible gunners and assistants performing maintenance as

required.

The Phoenix, being anchored, as were other ships in the harbor, had a

gangway lowered over the side for whatever personnel coming aboard or

leaving the ship. The gangway at that time was lowered on the starboard side

with the top platform some six feet beyond the metal splinter shield of gun

3. The OOD, Officer of the deck, with assistants of Quartermaster, Marine

orderly and Seaman First Class Messenger were in attendance for quarter deck

duties .One was overheard to announce in a clear voice, "Landing barge

approaching the gangway"; then another remark was heard; "Must be the

recruits coming aboard."

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