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The Atlantic, the Pacific – Jim Downey definitely got in his ocean time during World War II.
The Navy radioman spent the war on LST 620, and that ship did everything from land supplies on Omaha Beach
to land troops on Okinawa. If Downey joined the Navy to see the world, he got his money's worth.
Downey grew up on Yonkers, New York, an industrial city on the Hudson River north of New York City. His
dad was an electrical engineer for Bell Telephone and commuted into the city each day for work.
"During the depression, he was a good provider," Downey said. "We always had food on the table and shoes
on our feet."
Downey graduated from Gorton High School in 1943, and joined the Navy on Sept. 20, four days before his 18th birthday. "I didn't want to be a foot soldier. I talked my dad into letting
me join early. My brother was already in the service, and my dad dreaded me going in."
Boot camp was at Newport, Rhode Island, and then on to radio school. "I knew Morse Code, and I had some
background in radio. I always had an interest in radio."
Most of the three months' of school was spent improving the young sailors' typing and Morse Code skills, and then it was off to the fleet. For
Downey, it meant being sent to Seneca, Illinois, to become part of the inaugural crew for LST-620. The ship had just been built.
"It was that time of the war where it was all young guys going in. I
would guess that 90 percent of the men on the ship were under 20 years old. It was my first time away from home. I'd led a pretty sheltered life, but I grew up fast."
It was on the Seneca that Downey
became acquainted with the routine that was to make up his life for the next 19 months. It was called four on, eight off, four on, eight off, four on, and so forth. There were three radiomen on the ship,
and each would take a four hour shift and then get eight hours off before taking their next four hour shift.
The relatively short shifts helped overcome the tedium of listening to the dits and dahs
coming over the radio set and typing it onto sheets of paper. It would later have to be decoded so the message could be read.
"When the ship wasn't really doing anything, the bosuns and others could
take it easy, but the radiomen had to keep working." Downey said it was fortunate that throughout the time he was on the ship, none of the radio guys got sick. "I suppose we would have had to do double
shifts."
The new crew took the ship down the Mississippi River and then out into the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida and up to Norfolk, Virginia. "We called the LST a 'Large Slow Target' because it had
a top speed of about 12 knots, and it usually cruised at 10 knots."
The LST actually stood for Landing Ship Tank, and was designed to carry tanks or any other war material to where it was needed. The
ship was 328 feet long and 50 feet wide. The bridge and control parts of the ship, including the cramped radio room, were in the stern of the vessel with large cargo decks in the bow.
There were eight
officers and 100 men. The captain and the executive officer were both enlisted men who had been promoted to ensigns.
The ship was part of the 11th Amphibious group, and it loaded up a hold full of
medical equipment including ambulances and headed out to sea.
"You know a ship like that is always fighting on the front line. It's always out there where the U-boats are. I never thought of that
when I was in the Navy, but I think about it now," Downey said. "We were such a big and slow target, they wouldn't have even needed to use a torpedo on us, they could just have taken us out with their
guns."
The trip across the Atlantic was in the largest convoy ever assembled in the war, Downey said. It was mainly bringing troops and supplies to back up the recent invasion at Normandy. The
convoy was escorted by Canadian corvettes.
"Now and then we could hear the depth charges going off, but we couldn't see anything."
LST 620 delivered its medical supplies to the beach in France, and
then began a routine of heading to British ports to pick up another load and then heading back to France.
"We would come in at a high tide with empty ballast tanks. We would drop this very large
anchor about 300 feet out. When we hit the beach, we would fill up the ballast tanks, and that would hold us on the beach. The anchor would keep the stern from moving."
When it was time to go, the
ship would wait for high tide again, dump its ballast, and then use the anchor to help drag it off the beach and back to sea. The LST dumped men and supplies at Omaha, Utah and St. Michel beaches.
"One night on a crossing, our lookout shouted 'Torpedo!' and he jumped overboard. It turned out that it was only a porpoise. They loved to come straight at us and then dive under the ship. But we thought
we had lost a shipmate."
Luckily for the sailor in question, the "man overboard" was signaled back to a trailing patrol boat that rescued the man. Downey said he didn't find out until 50 years later
at a reunion that the man had been rescued. "So he lived to see another day, but not on our ship."
On one of the stops in Weymouth, England, Downey and the ship's quartermaster, another young sailor,
were invited by the crusty old chief bosun's mate to accompany him to a local pub.
"I was embarrassed to admit it, but I'd never had a drink before. We got there about noon, and they kept feeding us
this hot beer. By two o'clock the quartermaster and I were not feeling too good and we needed a place to go."
The men staggered to a Red Cross facility and passed out. "Everything was going round and
round. After that, I didn't drink anymore."
At another stop, in Londonderry in Northern Ireland, Downey came back to the ship deathly ill. "The doctor said I had food poisoning, and he asked me what I
had eaten. I told him I'd ordered steak and chips. He said, 'They don't have any steak over here. You probably had horse meat."
In August of 1944, LST 620 was ordered back to Norfork. The trip back
took 19 days and the convoy encountered a hurricane-force storm.
LSTs are flat-bottomed boats and even in relatively calm seas have a tendency to roll. In a major storm, they can be hell on wheels.
"Our crews quarters were down the starboard side of the ship, and normally you can see all the way down the passageway several hundred feet. During that storm, I was heading for my rack and I looked down
the passageway and all I could see was the second hatch down. That's how much the ship was bending.
"And when we hit a wave, the twin screws would come right out of the water. But I wasn't scared. It
never entered my mind to be scared. When you're young, you think you're invincible and you have little fear. I never felt I was in danger. I think about it now.
"I never got really seasick. I got a
little woozy sometimes. But when I was a kid I was always carsick. I'd have to sit in the front seat so I wouldn't get sick. My dad wondered why I would ever go in the Navy."
Back in Norfolk, most
of the crew took leave. Then it was down through the Panama Canal and up to San Diego and then across to Hawaii. At 10 knots, these were not speedy voyages.
The ship then headed for the South Pacific.
"I remember when we crossed the equator. I had curly hair, and they were really waiting for me. They cut it off right down the middle and just left the curls at the sides. And then we had to crawl
through some garbage in our skivvies while they paddled our backsides. At the end was the chief bosun, and we had to kiss his belly. And then we had to sit in an electric chair where we got a shock. We
had to do all of that for the honor of being called a shellback."
LST 620's first mission in the Pacific was to offload supplies at Guadal Canal. From there it became a routine of shuttling troops and
supplies from one island to another across the Pacific.
The ship could hold 140 troops in the sleeping compartments on one side of the ship, but for short jaunts, many more soldiers could be
accommodated, and they would simply be out on the large deck.
The ship landed at Saipan, Guam, and Iwo Jima to bring in men and material after the islands had been secured. Downey remembers one supply
run where a fleet of Jeeps was being dropped off. The sailors on the LST appropriated one of the Jeeps, painted it battleship gray, put Navy numbers on it and dubbed it the ship's Jeep.
After that,
when the ship's captain needed to go visit the admiral, he did it in style.
The captain was an easy going sort. "We never saw him much. He never bothered us, he just expected us to do our job. That's
why you see in the pictures a lot of bear chests. One of the other radiomen, Sam, only wore a swimsuit the whole time we were in the Pacific.
In April 1945, LST 620 finally saw its first combat
action. The ship was loaded with ammunition and patiently waited for several days anchored off the beach until it was allowed to land. "I suppose it was a little dangerous, but I didn't think about it."
Downey said the Navy had established a picket line made up of destroyers between Okinawa and Japan to give an early warning when the Kamikazes were coming in.
"When they were 50 miles out, they
would radio us their positions and headings and we would go to general quarters.
They had fogging machines, and they would fog up the harbor pretty good. The hospital ships were especially well protected by the fog."
Later, LST 620 brought troops to the little island of Ie
Shima on the northwest coast of Okinawa. On this mission a Kamikaze was headed right for the LST but it was blown out of the air by a destroyer before it could complete its mission. Famed World War II
journalist Ernie Pyle was killed at Ie Shima.
Back at Okinawa, all the ships in the fleet were ordered to sea to weather a massive typhoon. "If we'd been in the harbor, we'd have washed up on the
beach.
On another day, LST 620 was heading out of the harbor to get supplies. Downey was heading to his rack, his four hour shift over. As he looked out to the ocean, he saw a large mine go by, very
close to the ship's hull.
"I don't know whose it was, or what it was doing there. It just went by like that. I was too young to be afraid. I just went to my bunk and got a good night's sleep. It
wouldn't have done any good to tell anyone. It was gone.
"The Lord has taken care of me all my life. I'm 82 now, and He's still taking care of me."
When the war ended, LST 620 was sent to
Sasebo, Japan, as part of the occupation force. "My memory is that it was a desolate place. I never saw a soul, no one. When they saw us landing, the people all stayed inside."
Next up for the ship
was Shanghai, China. Now it was the duty of the landing ship to bring Chinese troops up to Manchuria to fight the communist troops under Mao Tse Dung. "We put the troops on the top deck. They were a
ragged lot. I watched them pulling the lice off their bodies. We were glad to have them off the ship."
Downey earned enough points to go home, and he took a troop transport back to San Diego and
eventually to Ledo Beach, Long Island, where his folks were waiting for him.
He worked in New York for a department store. Downey didn't join the reserves after the war, but he later was convinced to
join up because the extra money would allow him to buy a car.
"The next thing I knew I was recalled for the Korean War, and my little brother was driving my car."
He was later assigned to Lubbock, Texas, where he met his wife. The two have now been married for 56 years.
Downey later moved to Texas, still in the department store business as a buyer and
merchandise manager, and he retired when he was 61. One of his two daughters moved to the Twin Cities, and the Downeys followed them several years ago.
He says he has acclimated well, and is a regular
member of the "Grumpy Old Men's Club" that shares coffee regularly at the Apple Valley Post 1776. Four years ago, Downey was honored with a Liberation Medal, presented by Congressman John Kline, for his
participation in the invasion at Normandy.
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