July 14, 1996

(Footnotes are marked * and a number. All the notes are at the end.)

It was Memorial Day, 1942, and the last thing that one would expect would be Admiral Chester Nimitz sending the crew of the carrier Yorktown on yet another mission. But that's just what happened.

The battle of Coral Sea had almost put The Fighting Lady out of commission: three bombs had torn through her on May 8, killing over 60 people. The damage was severe, and when the battered USS Yorktown CV-5 limped into Pearl Harbor on May 27, the men who knew best how to repair such damage said that three months would be required. Even the most optimistic estimate required two weeks. But that would take too long, for Nimitz knew that Japan was planning a surprise attack, and one more American aircraft carrier might make all the difference. The repair job was rushed, some shortcuts were taken, and only the most essential work was performed.

Mere days later, Admiral Nimitz apologized to the crew for their protracted tour of duty, promised them liberty on the west coast on their return, and sent them to Midway. Little did anyone know, but Yorktown would never make it back to Pearl.

Just about the last person that one would expect on that crew was Pops. He wasn't all that old, but war is a young man's job, and even a year or two could make all the difference. Pops was not an educated man, but neither was he stupid. He knew that war was for the young. He learned it the hard way, serving in France during The Great War, also known as The War To End All Wars, and finally called World War I.

Pops had plenty of reasons to stay home. There was his age. He was also a father with a wife and four kids at home; the oldest, a girl, was about to graduate from high school, one son was just a couple of years too young to join the Navy and another planned to go into the Air Force. I guess that made him a whole generation older than most of the crew aboard Yorktown. That's why his crew mates called him "Pops". But Pops would never have considered staying on dry land. He had been in the Naval Reserve for years, taking Uncle Sam's money. Those few extra dollars had kept his family alive during the Depression. I guess he considered it his duty to repay that debt. So when his adopted country called him once again to war, he answered. They made him a Chief Petty Officer, or some such thing and sent him into the depths of a ship to make sure that the boilers got fed.

His wife was no fool. She knew that war did not respect a little gray hair, and feared that he would be sailing to his death. "Don't worry, Mary", he said, "an aircraft carrier is a floating city. I'll be perfectly safe there!" To this day, I wonder whether or not he ever told her the truth: in those days, aircraft carriers were big, but they didn't carry much armor. For their safety they relied on being fast, and having a screen of destroyers nearby.

I won't bore you with the details of the story. The history books contain all the details that you are likely to want. The Japanese had indeed planned a surprise attack on Midway, and they arrived loaded for bear. They had almost four times as many ships as the US. The Japanese had about the same number of aircraft, but theirs were better, and their pilots had more experience. Japanese bombs and torpedoes were better, too. Some folks say that, if an American torpedo actually hit the target and then actually proceeded to explode, it was an event worth writing home about. *1

Through the grace of God, the Americans won. But Yorktown was lost. Actually, she was lost twice...

On June 4, a force of 18 dive bombers and 6 fighters took off from the Japanese carrier Hiryu. At 1140 they spotted their target: three carriers and a total of 22 cruisers and destroyers. Minutes later, they were attacked by 18 Wildcats - the Americans had better radar and had seen them coming. There ensued a nasty little dogfight: the Japanese Zeros were better planes; but there were more Wildcats. The Japanese fighter escort was eventually shot down, along with six of the bombers. Three more bombers were shot down by Lieutenant Arthur Brassfield. I suppose that he would rather have been teaching high school back in Missouri, but that dogfight had cost five of his buddies, and he got even. Yorktown's gunners dropped a couple more bombers, but Yorktown suffered from three direct hits and a near miss that still did a lot of damage. One of the bombs carried a delay fuze. It crashed through at least five decks and an industrial-sized coffee percolator before exploding in the stack. The blast snuffed the fires of the boilers and ruptured lines on three boilers. Yorktown's speed dropped from 30 knots to six. Twenty minutes later, she was dead in the water.

The men of Yorktown were not about to give up. They fought fires; carpenters shored up the holes in the wooden flight deck; the engineers and boiler-room men brought up some steam. Pops had a hand in the latter. An hour and ten minutes after the bomb exploded in her stack, Yorktown hoisted signal flags: "my speed 5", and spontaneous cheers rang out from the screening ships. By 1437, the Fighting Lady was making 19 knots.

The Japanese had lost too much and gained too little. They were determined to draw blood. Hiryu launched a force of 10 dive bombers and 6 fighters, and they made a beeline for Yorktown. Once again, Yorktown saw them coming. Six US fighters already in the air were dispatched to intercept. Yorktown sent up eight planes, and other carriers contributed some. Another dogfight ensued, with quality against numbers. Yorktown antiaircraft fire opened up. The main guns employed the novel approach of firing into the ocean just ahead of the low-flying enemy, with the ensuing waterspout slapping the plane out of the air. They did a good job, but five torpedo bombers made it through.

Even at just 19 knots, Yorktown was agile, and managed to evade two torpedoes. Two more hit her, and hard. The damage was extreme, and Yorktown stopped dead in the water, all electricity out, engines out, rudder jammed, and tilting 17 degrees to port. The list got worse, and within ten minutes, she was down to 26 degrees. The flight deck was almost touching the water, which was itself covered by a film of flammable oil from Yorktown's ruptured fuel tanks.

Yorktown was down and out, useless as an aircraft carrier. Captain Buckmaster made the decision to salvage her remaining assets: nearly 3,000 men still on board. At 1455, he ordered raised the blue and white signal flag for "Abandon ship". From then on, it was a race against time to remove Yorktown's crew before her list reached such a point that she just plain fell over and sank. Her wounded posed a special problem: you just can't carry a stretcher when the deck is canted 26 degrees. Buckmaster was the last man off, indulging in one last tour through the ship to make sure that all of his crew were safely away.

For some, the escape was easier, for others, it was more difficult. Nobody had it really easy, because the were abandoning their ship, and they all loved Yorktown.

Stress does funny things to your perceptions, and during his escape from the damaged carrier, all that Pops saw was darkness. In this darkness, he walked and walked, encountering no people, no objects. Far off in the distance, he could see a spark of white light. He followed that light for what seemed like hours. At least that's his story.

Nobody knows how Pops made it from the bowels of Yorktown into the water. But it seems clear that, while his mind was walking towards the light, his body was swimming towards a lifeboat. He didn't hear the voices either, but his shipmates were calling to him from that boat, "Come on, Pops! You can make it!" And so he did. Pops was soon aboard the lifeboat and later transferred to the Reuben James *2.

Night fell, and to the happy surprise of the nearby destroyers, Yorktown's list got no worse. Her sister ships began to consider salvage operations. As day broke, the surrounding destroyers were surprised to hear machine gun fire from the abandoned Yorktown. A boarding party was sent to investigate. They found Seaman Second Class Norman Pichette. The seaman had received a severe shrapnel wound in the stomach, and later had been missed in the sweep to abandon ship. He then dragged himself up three decks, and was clever enough to do something guaranteed to attract attention: fire a machine gun toward a destroyer. As Pichette was being hurried to sick bay on the destroyer, he gasped out an important message: there was another wounded sailor aboard Yorktown. That sailor was rescued and nursed back to health, but Pichette didn't make it. His last thoughts were about helping his shipmate.

The two trips to Yorktown for survivors and a subsequent survey made it seem possible to salvage the gallant old ship. Buckmaster asked for volunteers and got plenty. He hand-picked a team of 24 officers and 145 men. Pops was included. He loved that ship, and by God and Saint Patrick, he knew her boilers.

Yorktown was taken under tow by the minesweeper Vireo at the brisk speed of 2 knots, toward Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile, the salvage crew worked on board. Most of the effort went to righting the list, and to that end they scavenged anything loose on the listing side and threw it overboard. Some of the heavier items had to be pried or cut loose. The salvage operation was suspended at nightfall, only to be resumed the next morning. They cut loose heavy guns and pushed them into the sea. Planes in the hanger deck were dropped overboard. Yorktown's list improved by two degrees. They were winning!

Meanwhile, on the morning of May 5, the commander of Japanese submarine I-168 had received a "most urgent" message concerning Yorktown:

  As a result of our aerial attack, a large type carrier of Enterprise class has
  been severely damaged and is drifting at a point 150 miles northeast of Midway
  Island. The I-168 submarine will immediately chase and sink her.

The remaining US ships hunted for the Japanese sub, and nearly got her. When at last she made good her escape, I-168 proudly radioed that

  We sank Yorktown.

Little did the Japanese know, but the gallant Yorktown was still a contender. In fact, the torpedo damage had corrected her list to a mere 17 degrees. Salvage operations continued, and the early morning of June 7 saw the Fighting Lady still afloat. The story ends here, though. There was just too much to do, and too little to do it with. The salvage effort was doomed, and once again Yorktown was abandoned. The destroyer escorts lowered their flags to half mast, the crews removed their caps and stood at attention.

At 0458 June 7, just as dawn broke, Yorktown slid beneath the waves. Buckmaster, her captain, reported:

  During all these actions and the many weeks at sea in preparations for them the
  fighting spirit of YORKTOWN was peerless; that fighting spirit remains alive
  even though the ship herself has perished gloriously in battle. The wish closest
  to the hearts of all of us who were privileged to serve in that gallant ship is
  that she might be preserved not only in memory but by the crew's being kept together
  to man, commission, and return against the enemy a new aircraft carrier, preferably
  another YORKTOWN.

Midway was primarily a series of air battles. There was air-to-air fighting, air-to-ship, ship-to-air. There was some fighting between air and ground when the Japanese planes attacked Midway atoll. But there was never any ship-to-ship fighting. In fact, throughout the entire four days of the battle at Midway, Japanese and American ships never even came within sight of each other.

For those who appreciate numbers, there were 307 US casualties to 2,500 Japanese. We lost one carrier to their four. We got one of their heavy cruisers, they got one of our destroyers. 147 US aircraft were destroyed versus a Japanese loss of 332. The United States won at Midway, and it was the turning point for the war in the Pacific.

But this is not really the story of Midway. This is the story of Pops, and the ship whom he loved. When he had served his country, I am sure that Pops was glad to go home.

When I knew him, Pops was old. He didn't tell war stories, at least not any more. If I were smart, I would have asked him. What I know abour Pops' time in the Navy I learned from his daughter. I don't know whether or not he got any medals. He did what he had to, when he had to; and when the dirty and dangerous job was done, he just went home. Because, down deep, he was a man of peace who just did what had to be done. For that reason alone, whether of not he got any recognition, Dennis Kelly, is a hero to me. I never called him "Pops". I called him "Granddad". And I am glad that I had the honor of doing so.

- Dennis Griesser


*1 - On June 4, the Japanese carrier Kaga was sighted by the USS Nautilus. Kaga had been attacked previously, and as Nautilus stalked the wounded carrier, Kaga's crew got the damage under control. Worried that Kaga might return to action, Nautilus attacked Kaga with three torpedoes. Two missed outright. The third hit Kaga just right. The torpedo then cracked in half without exploding and the warhead sank. The rear portion bobbed to the surface like a fishing float. Japanese sailors who had been thrown off Kaga in the earlier engagement swam to the American torpedo and used it as a life raft.

*2 - At least that's what he thought. The Destroyer Reuben James (DD-245) was torpedoed and sunk off western Iceland on December 31, 1941 with the loss of 115 lives out of a complement of 160. Other ships had been attacked and damaged, but Reuben James was the first U.S. naval vessel lost to enemy action after the U.S. entered World War II. Although the incident horrified those close to the war, most of America paid little attention. Folk singer Woody Guthrie didn't ignore that ship; he wrote a song about her. Despite this, the accounts that I have heard, are emphatic: Pops was rescued by Reuben James. Perhaps he was saved by a ghost ship!

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