Tin Can Titans

by John Wukovits

  As the war continued and the defenders languished in Japanese prison camps, Americans in and out of the military embraced the names of Bataan and Corregidor as emblematic of all that was noble about their military. MacArthur had promised to return to the islands, and now, in February 1945, it appeared his forces were about to restore Bataan and Corregidor to American control.

  Desron 21 destroyers again played their familiar supporting role. The ships were to conduct bombardments; provide gunfire support in the assaults of Corregidor, southern Bataan, and three tiny islands protecting the entrance to Manila Bay; and cover minesweepers tasked with clearing the waters about Corregidor and Manila Bay of mines.

  “Cruisers and cans all got underway at dawn for Corregidor and Bataan where we bombarded and protected the mine-sweeps during their mine-sweeping of Manila Bay,” Doc Ransom recorded on February 13. “Corregidor is really a bastion and we watched the planes hit it time and again. We threw 120 rounds into Bataan.”25

  Each morning during the operation the destroyers left their base in Subic Bay, two hours north of Manila Bay, to arrive off Corregidor for the scheduled bombardment and minesweeping operations. They began on February 13 with bombardments of targets on both Bataan and Corregidor. At the same time men on deck with rifles swept the waters to destroy any mines that floated in their vicinity.

  Operations off the Philippines were more hazardous than similar assignments along New Guinea, mainly because of the kamikaze threat. However, Japanese gun batteries in Corregidor’s caves and Manila Bay mines caused damage on Valentine’s Day of 1945.

  Chesnutt’s Fletcher was first. In an effort to locate and eliminate enemy gun batteries before American troops landed on the island, the destroyers moved closer to Corregidor and sat dead in the water as bait to entice the Japanese into firing, at which point waiting gun crews would zero in on the enemy’s flashes and puffs of dust. On one occasion Commander Foster waited for the telltale flashes, returned fire, and reversed course, but not before an enemy shell smacked against the ship’s forward five-inch gun mount. Seaman Chesnutt had been watching the action with a shipmate on deck when he left to go below. Before he reached his bunk, a shell hit where Chesnutt had been a few seconds earlier, killing the sailor with whom he had been standing and opening a hole in the deck before exploding seven feet above Chesnutt’s bunk. “Holes everyplace,” Chesnutt confided to his diary later that day, “I can see sky, water and below. My bunk wet from burst water lines and holes all in it. What kept us from blowing sky high, no one knows.”26 Fletcher’s batteries silenced the offending enemy gun, but the shell’s shrapnel killed three men and wounded six.

  While in his action report Foster censured his ammunition magazine crew, who he contended left their posts too hastily, he praised Watertender 2/c Elmer C. Bigelow. A member of one of the repair parties, Bigelow ignored the risks and rushed into the blinding smoke and searing fires to prevent the magazines from igniting. Bigelow, who declined wasting precious seconds to don protective clothing and gas mask, used two fire extinguishers to douse the threat. As he battled the flames, acrid, burning smoke seared Bigelow’s lungs, but he extinguished the fires and cooled the ammunition to prevent it from exploding. Had the fire ignited those magazines, Fletcher and most of her crew would have been sent to the bottom by her own shells. His valiant effort saved his shipmates but cost Bigelow his life, as the next day he succumbed to the effects of inhaling the toxic gases and smoke. For his efforts, Bigelow was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.

  The crew had hardly shaken off the effects when Foster received orders to assist another Desron 21 destroyer, Hopewell, in rescuing men from a sinking minesweeper, YMS-48. Hopewell had already raced over to assist the stricken minesweeper, but thick enemy gunfire kicked up water and sprayed the decks. One shell passed so close that the ship’s gunnery officer, Lieutenant Claude N. Sapp, said he thought he could have reached out and grabbed it.

  As Hopewell picked up the first survivors, the destroyer, according to a Navy Department press release, “lurched violently from several Jap hits. Splashes in the water were dangerously close to the survivors swimming frantically toward the Hopewell.”27 The ship sustained hits in four places, including the diesel generator room and the deck house, while losing seven dead and twelve wounded.

  Now Fletcher was asked to move into the same area and help fellow sailors, a move that required her to operate under the same guns that had knocked out two ships. As Foster nudged Fletcher closer to the minesweeper, turning his destroyer into a more enticing target, an American pilot swept low to shield the destroyer with a plume of smoke, and then spotted as Fletcher’s batteries located and destroyed the offending guns. “The courage and endurance of our badly wounded lying maimed on the bloody decks with the ship shaking from rapid continuous counter battery fire cannot be too highly spoken of,” wrote Foster after the incident.28

  The carnage Chesnutt saw on the fellow squadron ship was horrific. After months of meeting the enemy without sustaining casualties, he and the Fletcher crew now witnessed enough, on his ship and on Hopewell, to last the war. As Fletcher neared Hopewell, Chesnutt saw men whose torsos had been ripped apart, dead bodies hanging over rails, “and the deck was red with blood.” On Fletcher, a young sailor who had been aboard the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48) and survived the attack at Pearl Harbor, now lay at Gun Number One in a bloody heap. “His legs were almost entirely blown off between knee and feet,” wrote Chesnutt, “he died later. His name was Wilhelm, and he was always smiling and always had a cheerful word.” A sixteen-year-old sailor from Alabama who had lied about his age had the “top of head blown off and other parts blown open. I had talked to him a short time before and it doesn’t seem true. One boy I had left 5 minutes before he was hit in the head.”29

  Later that afternoon Fletcher and Hopewell were ordered back to Subic Bay, but Doc Ransom and La Vallette were next into the enemy’s lair.

  “A Horrible Experience and Night”

  Valentine’s Day for La Vallette started like almost every other day in the Southwest Pacific—an early morning departure to another station for patrolling, escorting, or bombarding. There was no reason to think that this day’s assignment—blasting targets on Bataan and Corregidor—would be any more difficult than similar prior missions. Doc Ransom would be ready with his medical instruments in the wardroom, but it was just as likely the La Vallette would carry out her tasks and return to Subic Bay without mishap.

  Commander Wells Thompson took La Vallette, again joined by Radford and the cruiser Montpelier, out of Subic Bay at 5:30 a.m., veered south, and headed for Manila Bay. Three hours later the trio stood off Manila Bay’s entrance, where they patrolled the waters south of Corregidor to clear the way for the minesweepers that would follow.

  That afternoon the two destroyers moved closer to Mariveles to screen for the minesweepers, with La Vallette astern of the last minesweeper and Radford following behind. Radford’s skipper, Commander Jack E. Mansfield, alerted Thompson by TBS that mines had been sighted dead ahead, and when Thompson spotted a cluster five hundred yards out, he stopped La Vallette and ordered a 40mm gun crew, aided by men with rifles and a machine gun, to destroy the mines. “I was a good shot as a kid,” said Quartermaster Johnson. “The mines were popping up, and I got a rifle to see if I could hit any.”30 Ransom thought he saw at least seven of the enemy devices, but his ship withdrew after the three closest had been dispatched so that minesweepers could enter the harbor.

  Ransom walked back to the wardroom to check on his pharmacist’s mates and to listen to the radio. He had just sat down when a huge explosion tossed him onto the deck and toppled a stack of phonograph records onto him. On the bridge, Thompson felt the ship lift twice. Others near him were thrown to the deck as a torrent of water engulfed them, and the man at the wheel was swept into the adjoining charthouse. One sailor was tossed several feet into the air before falling onto the radio antenna, and the engineering officer, Lieutenant G. W. Soete
, had been walking on the main deck when a torrent of water washed him over the side. He broke surface fifty yards from the ship, swam to a powder can floating in the water, and used it to keep him buoyant until a whaleboat from the Radford rescued him.

  The ship’s executive officer, Lieutenant M. P. Myers III, hurried to the main deck to find it littered with loose life nets, lines, a radar antenna, and other items. He started down the fireroom hatch to help a man struggling to move, but was kept away by the rush of hot steam coming from below. Watertender 1/c Robert H. Redman donned an asbestos suit, disappeared down the hatch into the Number One fireroom, and dragged a severely scalded fireman to the hatch, where Myers and another man lifted their shipmate to the deck. Electrician’s Mate 2/c Theodore F. Mackert and Electrician’s Mate 3/c Coy R. Wilson raced into the flooded communications room to pull out several shipmates, saving their lives in the process.

  As La Vallette’s bow continue to settle lower in the water, Commander Thompson took quick action. He ordered every man topside in case he needed to abandon ship, sent aft as many as he could to lighten the load on the bow section, and had sailors throw overboard the starboard anchor, ammunition in two handling rooms, spare gun barrels, and other loose items, to reduce the strain on the ship’s forward section.

  The men from two ammunition magazines below, surrounded by explosives, evacuated, but in their haste forgot to shut the watertight hatches as they emerged. Six compartments flooded because of the oversight. When Thompson later investigated, he learned that each man had assumed others trailing behind would close the hatches. Thompson declined to censure his men, and placed the onus on himself for not training them as well as he could.

  Two minutes after the explosion rattled La Vallette and blew men overboard, Commander Mansfield hoisted a flag asking Thompson if he needed assistance. When Thompson replied in the affirmative, Mansfield lowered his whaleboat to rescue La Vallette sailors and moved his ship closer to La Vallette to take her in tow.

  Radford was only one hundred yards out when she struck a second mine. The explosion knocked out all bridge instruments on Radford, impaired her steering, and tossed Doc Ransom’s counterpart in Radford one hundred feet into the water, where the ship’s whaleboat rescued the unconscious officer. Radford lost three dead and four injured in the explosion.

  “What an explosion,” wrote Seaman Fahey aboard Montpelier after La Vallette was damaged. “A large geyser of water went high into the air, covering a very large section of the Bay. When everything had cleared, I could see that part of the bow had been blown off.” He watched as Radford rushed to La Vallette’s aid, only to erupt from a second mine. “The water surrounding the two ill-fated destroyers was cluttered with toilet paper, supplies and life rafts. Both ships were dead in the water.”31

  The squadron known throughout the Pacific for its good luck—O’Bannon, Fletcher, and Nicholas until now had fought the Japanese for more than two years without a scratch—had suddenly lost four destroyers in five hours.

  Upon hearing groans and shouting, Doc Ransom ran out of La Vallette’s wardroom onto the main deck, “where there was fuel oil all over everything and steam coming out of the forward fire room hatch.” When someone yelled that casualties littered the bridge, he rushed up to find a signalman with a bloodied face, “lying across two radio antennas where he had been blown by the blast.”32 Ransom checked the sailor, treated him for minor wounds, pulled him out onto the main deck, and looked around for the next casualty.

  Ransom noticed that his pharmacist’s mates were already at their stations with first-aid kits, tending to the bleeding and dazed men. He checked each casualty to determine the seriousness, gave his pharmacist’s mates instructions about treating the minor injuries, and then handled the more serious cases himself. Quartermaster Johnson was in the wardroom tending to a friend suffering from severe burns when Ransom came by. “We removed his shoes, and skin came away with them. Ransom gave him a shot of morphine. Ransom was all over the place, trying to be everywhere to treat the wounded,” recalled Johnson.33 Ransom could do nothing but try to make the sailor, a teenager from Iowa, comfortable before he succumbed a few hours later.

  For thirty uninterrupted hours Ransom patched up the more grievously wounded, actions for which he was awarded a Bronze Star. His five pharmacist’s mates worked either at the aft or forward dressing stations or at a temporary one set up on the forecastle, mending the sailors brought to them or stumbling in for treatment. Those training sessions Ransom had conducted, not only with his assistants but with the entire crew as well, now reaped dividends. Ransom concluded that he had been able to treat what might ordinarily have been an overwhelming number of casualties only “due to previous planning and instruction periods,” and recommended that his quintet be commended. He stated in his report that they had performed “wonderful and remarkable work,” and that “several patients’ lives were saved by their splendid assistance.”34

  Seeing that the ship was settling by the bow, and uncertain whether the destroyer would remain afloat, Ransom checked that every casualty wore a life jacket. He hurried to the wardroom, now so filled with casualties that it looked like a hospital emergency room after a major catastrophe. “One boy, who had been dragged out of the fire room alive, was in bad shape,” wrote Ransom of a sailor who suffered from second- and third-degree burns over his entire body. Another patient lay in a coma from a compound skull fracture, a third bore a ten-inch abdominal laceration and suffered from a fractured nose, and another “had a deep laceration of the scrotum and perineum,” while one sailor “had a puncture wound of the knee joint.”35 Ransom kept the men with minor injuries aboard ship and transferred the more serious cases, such as Ensign Edward A. Christofferson Jr., with lacerated head and face, to the cruiser Denver or to the hospital ship Hope.

  For the first time in the war, Ransom treated men he knew would not survive. The doctor did what he could to make comfortable Fireman 1/c Donald W. Mai, who had been in the Number One fireroom, but with second- and third-degree burns covering his entire body, Mai could not last more than twenty-four hours. Ransom transferred Mai to Denver, where he succumbed the next day.

  After treating every case in the wardroom, Ransom returned to the main deck. At least seven men were unable to move because of severe back injuries, which worried Ransom. What would these men do if Commander Thompson ordered abandon ship? The back injuries “caused much concern,” he wrote. “The main thought in caring for these back injuries was to have all of them ready to be evacuated in case we had to abandon ship, and the possibility of sinking was ever present in my mind throughout the night.”36

  In his diary, Ransom listed seven men who had either been killed outright or later died from their wounds, and many injured, including “nine fractures, 46 lacerations, 10 brain concussions, 14 severe contusions, and one 3rd degree burn and acute pneumonia.”37 Within the first few hours, Ransom transferred eight of the most serious cases to the cruiser Denver, which had come alongside to assist, or to the hospital ship Hope. The bodies of four dead crew remained in the ravaged fireroom below for two days, until repair parties could finally extract their lifeless forms.

  “It was a horrible experience and night,” Ransom concluded of the explosion’s aftermath. As the exhausted physician tended the wounded who lay in his wardroom and on the main deck, shipmates cast admiring glances at the man everyone preferred to call “Doc” rather than the more formal “Doctor.” He had won their admiration for his many humorous announcements over the ship’s loudspeaker and for the meticulous care he gave the crew, in and out of battle. Doc Ransom was the military version of the country doctor who made house calls to ailing families, much as his father had done during his medical career. “He had the respect of the entire crew long before we hit the mine, when he really showed his stuff,” wrote Jack Bell, a sailor aboard La Vallette.38

  Commander Thompson had to move his damaged ship out of the harbor and away from the Japanese land batteries, but with his
steering ability hampered and with the loss of one engine, he faced a testy exit through those nasty mines that seemed to pop out of nowhere. Finally, by early evening, he cleared the bay and reached open waters. Five hours later a tug arrived to tow La Vallette, one of the few destroyers in the war to carry the dubious distinction of being both torpedoed and mined, to Subic Bay, where the pair arrived the next morning.

  “The ship is a mess with fuel oil everyplace,” Ransom entered in his diary. “The mine hit on the port side just aft of the wardroom and really tore up the ship. The bow is about four feet out of the water and we came mighty close to losing her.”39 Thompson docked La Vallette alongside the submarine tender Griffin as repairs began.

  The ship remained in Subic Bay for the next five days, during which time repair parties assessed the damage, removed the four bodies from below, pumped out flooded compartments, and patched up a sixteen-foot hole in La Vallette’s hull. Similar work was done aboard Radford, which had also returned to the bay after being damaged by the mine.

  While La Vallette was being repaired, the other Desron 21 destroyers focused on Corregidor. O’Bannon, Taylor, and two cruisers steamed to the north side of the island, and Hopewell, Nicholas, and one cruiser flanked to the south to provide cover for the February 15 assaults against Corregidor and the Bataan Peninsula. As paratroopers descended on the island and infantry landed on Bataan, the ships blasted targets along the Mariveles shore and the enemy guns concealed in the caves that pockmarked Corregidor’s cliffs.

  “We bombarded Corregidor as long as it was daylight,” wrote Sonarman Starr aboard Nicholas. “For two days, the Nicholas and others steamed close to the cliffsides, point-blank-range close, to draw Japanese fire from the tunnel openings. The idea was to find the guns and silence them. But we had to give the Japanese first shot.”