|
By Al Zdon
The lights were out.
The water was up to their waists.
When the call came for the handful of men five decks deep in the escort carrier Gambier
Bay to abandon ship, they were grateful to do so. The ship had been hit by dozens of artillery shells and was beginning sink.
They fought their way through the fire and smoke to the flight deck.
Seaman First Class Ed Hagerty examined the situation only briefly before deciding that a plunge into the South Pacific waters was his only real option at that point, and he made the jump. He was
happy to be clear of the sinking, exploding ship.
He didn't know at the time that his greatest ordeal still lay ahead.
ooooooo
Edward S. Hagerty spent his early years in Red Wing,
attending local schools. The family moved to Minneapolis when he was 13, and he soon began his studies at Nazareth Hall, a seminary in Arden Hills. He had a call to be a priest.
"After Pearl Harbor,
though, I decided to join the Navy. The priest vocation was no longer for me."
He joined up in early 1943, did training at Farragut, Idaho, and then went to quartermaster school in San Diego. His next
stop was Pearl Harbor where he joined the crew of the Gambier Bay.
The ships of the Casablanca class, like Gambier Bay, were called escort carriers, jeep carriers or baby carriers. They were a smaller
version of their big brothers, the attack carriers of the Pacific fleet.
Gambier Bay, CVE-73, was 512 feet long and had 28 aircraft aboard including 18 Wildcats, old Navy fighters, and 10 Avengers, a
torpedo bomber. The ship was built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company at Vancouver, Washington.
"They called them the 'Kaiser's coffins' " Hagerty said. "The armor on the ship was only five-eighths of
an inch thick. They were never really built for combat; they were built for anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic."
Unlike the big carriers which could cruise at over 30 knots, the Gambier Bay had a
top speed of about 17 knots. Besides its planes, it only had one major armament, a five-inch gun located at the aft of the ship.
Hagerty was a quartermaster striker and a seaman first class, meaning
that when he passed the test and had enough time in the Navy, he would become a quartermaster third class, a petty officer. His job was to act as helmsman and steer the ship, and to scan the horizon with
binoculars searching for enemy ships.
With Hagerty on board, Gambier Bay in mid-1944 traveled west to help out with the invasions of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. The carrier provided protection from
enemy aircraft and close ground support for the American troops invading those islands.
After a brief rest, Gambier Bay was back on line during the invasion of Peleliu. By early October, 1944, the
ship approached the Philippines to help out with the invasion at Leyte. It was General MacArthur's fulfillment of his promise: "I shall return."
The ship first provided support for the landings, then
joined five other escort carriers, three destroyers and four escort carriers as part of "Taffy 3." Along with Taffy 1 and 2, Taffy 3 continued to give support to the massive invasion.
Taffy 3's area
of operation was just off the large island of Samar in the eastern Philippines.
The Japanese had chosen this moment for a massive, all-or-nothing attack on the huge American fleet supporting the
Leyte landings. Japan broke its fleet into three parts and sent them on a collision course with the United States ships resulting in one of the largest naval battles in history.
The Battle of Samar
began just after sunrise on Oct. 25. The day before, Japan's Center Force had been hit hard by American aircraft as it worked its way through the San Bernardino Strait. Admiral Halsey, thinking the
threat from that direction was over, moved his big carriers to the north to attack a Japanese force that was mainly a decoy.
But the Center Force was anything but crippled. Coming right at Taffy 3,
which had been left alone to guard that part of the ocean, were four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two destroyers and 11 destroyer escorts. Included in the Japanese force was the battleship Yamato,
the largest warship ever built.
Ed Hagerty had been in his usual position during the night, on the bridge manning the wheel. The 13 ships in Taffy 3 had been zig-zagging throughout the night, not an
easy chore with so many ships and so many turns.
"At about 3:30 a.m., we could hear on our radios a lot of activity somewhere. We knew there was a battle going on. There was a lot of anxiety and
commotion on the radio, but we couldn't understand what it all meant. As it turned out, it was Oldendorf crossing the T on the Japanese."
Admiral Jesse Oldendorf, commanding a task group, oversaw the
destruction of Japan's Southern Force as it tried to navigate the Surigao Strait.
"On the Gambier Bay, we were nervous thinking something big was about to happen."
At 4 a.m., Hagerty stood down
from his watch but before he could even reach his bed the ship went to general quarters to launch its dawn patrol flight of five aircraft. At 6:38, the ship secured from general quarters, but 11 minutes
later the ship was called back to battle stations.
"One of our fighters reported an enemy surface group 20 miles to the west. They were closing on us at about 30 knots. That was really fast."
As
the mists dissolved that morning, the superstructures of the Japanese fleet could be seen on the horizon.
At 7 a.m., the Japanese fleet opened fire on Taffy 3, and specifically on the Gambier Bay, the
most exposed U.S. ship.
Hagerty's battle station was deep in the bowels of the Gambier Bay in the aft part of the ship. The ship had three stations where it could be steered from: the bridge, a
station on the starboard catwalk, and a station five decks below the fantail near the ship's rudder. That was Hagerty's station.
"For an hour and ten minutes our skipper kept us out of trouble by
chasing salvos. That means when a group of enemy shells landed, we would turn and race for that spot, assuming the Japanese were adjusting their firing toward where we had been." A rain squall gave
protection to Taffy 3 for about 20 minutes, but then the shells began to rain down on Gambier Bay and the other ships as the Japanese continued to close the gap.
Five sailors huddled by the equipment
in Steering Gear Aft, hoping they would never be called upon to do their jobs. If the ship got down to its last steering option, it was in deep trouble.
"The ship was absolutely shuddering from the
hits. It would shudder whenever we were hit, and it seemed like it was shuddering all the time. I'd never experienced anything like that."
The Japanese heavy cruisers Chokai and Chikuma closed to
point blank range on the damaged American carrier.
Gambier Bay had the one large gun, a five-incher directly above Steering Gear Aft, but it was knocked out by a shell early in the battle. To protect
the ship, Hagerty's crew was ordered to close the hatch on the five-inch ammunition compartment and to flood the compartment with sea water.
The forward engine room was hit, and the ship lost half its
power. Now, instead of a slow 17 knots, the ship could manage only about 11 knots.
Gambier Bay had launched all its planes by this time, but some were not equipped with bombs and others used theirs
up quickly. "So they just kept strafing the Japanese ships with machine guns, and then when they were out of ammo, they'd just keep attacking to draw their fire.
"The real heroes of battle were the
destroyers. They just kept making runs at the Japanese ships, firing their five-inch guns. It was difficult to keep the ships from colliding, but they were running all over the place."
"I would
estimate that from 8:20 in the morning until 9:07, the Gambier Bay was hit every two minutes. Sometimes the shells would just go through one side of the ship and out the other, our armor was so
thin."
By 8:45 a.m., the ship was dead in the water. One shell had narrowly missed the stern of the Gambier Bay, but the concussion had split open the hatch to the flooded ammunition compartment and
water was gushing into Hagerty's area. First, the sailors were up to their knees and soon they were up to their waists in water. As the ship began to shut down, power was lost and only emergency lights
were working.
At this point, the steering would have been shifted to Hagerty's group, but it was a moot point. "It didn't matter because we were dead in the water."
Still, the small clutch of men
waited for word that they could leave their station. "We were getting a little nervous. There was a lot of water, and we couldn't have stayed where we were very much longer without drowning."
Finally,
the word came over the speaker phones to abandon ship. "We headed up the ladders, but there were fires everywhere. A shell had hit the barber shop two decks above us. The rails were so hot that they
burned our hands. One guy didn't make it. We don't know what happened to him, but he didn't come out on top with the rest of us."
Hagerty saw the ship was listing badly to the port side. "I decided to
jump off the starboard side. It was about 30 feet down I suppose, and I had to jump way out to clear the angle of the ship."
In the water, Hagerty activated his life belt, powered by a CO2 cartridge,
and it quickly brought him to the surface. "Just about that time, four shells hit the water about 30 feet away, and there was a tremendous concussion. It was a shock all right, but it didn't seem like I
was injured – at least nothing I could detect."
Hagerty was covered, though, with red dye from one of the shells. The Japanese put the dye in the ammunition to track where the shells had
landed.
At 9:07, the ship went down. "She went down bow first, exposing the screws as she sank. The screws were the last thing we saw. She sank into the Philippines Trench, the deepest part of the
Pacific Ocean. Gambier Bay was the only carrier in the war sunk by shell fire."
Hagerty had swum as fast as he could away from the sinking ship, and now he made his way toward a life raft. "There were
about 25 guys at the raft. They had pulled the wounded on board, but the rest of the men were hanging on to the ropes on the side of the raft. I hooked my arm around one of the lanyards."
The swells
were six to eight feet, but the water was warm, at least in the daytime.
At about this time, he discovered that his lifebelt was leaking. For the rest of his time in the water, Hagerty would have to
manually blow it up at frequent intervals, sometimes not an easy procedure as he also had to hang onto the raft.
Seeing the ship go down was very hard for the crew, he said. "It was just devastating.
You build up a lot of loyalty toward your ship. But we had our hands full just trying to get our act together. I can't recall any yells or screams. It was kind of a somber time. Maybe that's not the
right word, but that's what it was like – somber."
After the sailors had been in the water for about an hour and a half, they saw a ship bearing down on them. They couldn't figure out if it was
Japanese or American.
"It turned out it was a Japanese cruiser, and it came by very close. They didn't shell us, they didn't depth charge us, they didn't machine gun us. All they did was give us the
thumbs down when they went by. They were just telling us we were goners."
At some point that morning, the men in and alongside the raft made the discovery that the casks of freshwater stored in the
raft turned out to be filled with salt water. They had evidently come open when the raft was thrown in the water.
"All we had were some malted milk balls and a few cans of Spam, but that was all doled
out the first day."
There was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun was blazing hot. "We had a few guys who were just crazy from thirst. They were hallucinating. They said they were going below to the
scuttlebutt for a drink, and we'd never see them again."
Hagerty, hanging onto the raft for dear life, was next to the communications officer from the ship. "He was wounded, but there was no room in
the raft for him even though he was bleeding. Later on, he just disappeared without a sound. There was kind of a swirl in the water, and he was gone. We decided later that he'd been hit by
sharks."
Indeed, almost since the time the men had first attached themselves to the raft, they could see the dorsal fins circling around.
The men expected a fairly quick rescue. What they
didn't know was that the call for a rescue operation wasn't ordered for seven hours after the ship sank, and then it was sent to the wrong coordinates.
Hagerty made it through the first day and the
first night in fairly good shape. "The ships' chaplain was aboard the raft, and after the communications officer disappeared we prayed. We prayed a lot after that. We prayed in the dark. He kept us
going.
"And the ship's dentist was on the raft. He was badly wounded himself, but he spent all his time treating the other men. He was hurting himself very badly, but he just kept taking care of the
guys."
The hot sun came up on the second day. There were no rescue vessels in sight.
"My biggest problem was staying awake on that second day. I'd wake up with the water breaking over my head, and
I'd have to haul myself up again. Plus I'd have to keep inflating that damned lifebelt."
During the second night, Hagerty lost consciousness. "When I came to my senses, I found myself on the raft.
Apparently I had passed out, and a sailor named Loren Flood got me into the raft. He saved my life. If I'd stayed in the water, I'd have been dead, but somehow he found room for me in the raft."
At
4:30 in the morning, the ordeal ended.
"All of a sudden there was a search light and it just blinded us. It was an LCI (landing craft – infantry) that was searching for men in the water. They
yelled at us, 'Who won the World Series?' And we yelled back, 'The St. Louis Cardinals.'
"They had a tough time getting us from the raft into the LCI. There were still sharks all around us. When it
was my turn to board, the sailors on the LCI grabbed me under the arms and lifted me on deck. I just collapsed.
"They placed a guard at the drinking fountain to protect us. We could only have little
sips at a time." Hagerty estimates that three or four sailors at their raft died during the 45 hours they were in the water. In all, 137 Gambier Bay men died in the battle and about 800 were
rescued.
The battle itself turned into a great U.S. victory. Despite smaller numbers, the Taffy forces caused the Center Force to turn around and not attack the American ships in Leyte Gulf. The
Japanese lost several ships.
Ironically, the two ships that did the most damage to the Gambier Bay, the Chokai and the Chikuma, were hit by American bombs and torpedoes and were sunk before the escort
carrier went down.
The LCI brought Hagerty and the other survivors in that group to Leyte Gulf. "We were attacked by a Japanese aircraft along the way, but we weren't hit. I didn't even wake up. I
heard about it later."
The survivors were taken aboard the admiral's communications ship, the USS Wasatch, where they got their first medical care, shots, and new clothes. "The only thing I had left
was my leaky lifebelt. It was still on me."
Was there ever a point where Hagerty gave up hope?
"I don't think it ever occurred to me. I know that sounds funny. But I was a 19-year-old kid. I just
had the optimism of youth. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't get picked up or survive."
Hagerty got 30 days survivor's leave and came home to Minneapolis. While home, one of the great ironic
twists in the story happened. A picture of Hagerty and his mother appeared in a Minneapolis newspaper with them holding the life belt.
It turns out that the life belt had been manufactured in
Minneapolis by Durkee-Atwood, who also had a plant in Red Wing. The Navy thought this was great publicity and a morale boost to the local companies.
Hagerty was told not to say anything bad about the
life belt. "So, I never told them how bad their belt was."
Hagerty spent time in Bremerton, Washington, waiting for a ship. He was assigned to the USS Rendova, CVE 114, where he finished his time in
the Navy.
After the service, he attended St. Thomas for two years, and then spent three years at Notre Dame getting a law degree. "My family could never have afforded that. It was all on the GI
Bill."
He practiced law in Minneapolis for 35 years in his own law firm that at one point had 15 attorneys. He has been retired for about 10 years.
He continued his service to his country many
years later by getting involved with an effort to build a memorial in San Diego for Taffy 3. He created a legal non-profit organization for Taffy 3, and the monument now stands on the fleet landing in
San Diego.
Because of the success in that endeavor, and because Taffy 3 was designed to accept donations and do charitable work, he and others were approached by a group trying to create a monument in
San Diego for entertainer Bob Hope.
The board for the enterprise included former president Gerald Ford as the honorary chairman and such other dignitaries as Billy Graham, Gov. Jesse Ventura,
Sen. John McCain and Sen. Daniel Inouye. Past National Commander Dan Ludwig of Minnesota served on the active board of the organization along with Hagerty. The American Legion became a key supporter of
the project.
It took several years, but the Bob Hope memorial was finally realized at a cost of over $2 million.
|
