DD696
Matrix Hero

Posts: 964
Joined: 7/9/2004 From: near Savannah, Ga Status: offline
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This Father's Day I have been remembering mine. As a young man he got caught up in WWII, joining the US Navy. I have letters he wrote from boot camp, from training schools, but, most importantly, I have his diary from the war. It was composed of two notebooks in which he jotted his thoughts and illustrated it with drawings. The unfortunate thing is that his mother many many years ago gave them to a friend to have copies made, and one of them was never returned. So what I am left with is this, in his own words: The cruise of the USS English from Okinawa Gunto to Japan during the final conquest of the Pacific. The journal of Harold Gorman Ellingson, Seaman, US Navy ---- April 1945 to January 1946. As I am getting along in years and my children show little interest in such matters, I was wondering if it would be worth putting these words of his into a thread for those here to read if you would like. I could simply retype them, but then the illustrations would be lost, or I could photograph the pages and post them here. As a sample, it starts as such: April 6, 1945 with task force 58.3 off Okinawa Gunto 300 mi. south of Japan. USS English was notified by the task force commander in the morning that the Japs had sent word that they were out to raid American positions on Okinawa and specifically to get task force 58.3. Also that tomorrow probably we would rendezvous with the Jap fleet. We had General Quarters all hands man your battle stations at 3 o'clock that morning and another one at 5 o'clock - bogies all around us. Our third GQ was at 7:30 o'clock. An American night fighter chased a jap plane (zeke) to our task force and we set up a wall of flak and shot the Jap down. The American was coming into the flak fast and he twisted and turned trying to escape it, but it got him too. The mess cooks were secured to go the mess hall where we cleaned up. In the middle of noon chow we had GQ again and I cussed and dropped my trays and ran. A Jap plane came in from the fantail and mount 2 swung aroung to it's stops and waited. My gun (left) opened up and shot about eight rounds. The 20's and 40's were chattering too. The plane went down 400 yards on our starboard quarter. I stepped out of the handling room and saw a greasy black smoke column up from the water. Another croaked Jap. That shooting from our mount was turned so close to the bridge that it shattered the plastex glass shield. It cut Captain Smith from his temple to his chin in one deep open gash. Ensigh Latrell had an inch diameter hole in his back and another in his arm. Hauled 'em off to sick bay. Damn it - and we didn't hit the Jap. It was a carrier. The cruiser "Astoria" was firing over us at that same Jap plane. Two shells (5 inch) burst over the fantail about 20 feet starboard. Mt #3 was firing. The men on the fantail 20's were knocked down faster than they could get up. Yandas got a tiny piece of shapnel in the seat of the britches and Lanchester got a little one on the back of his head. Stafford's life jacket was ripped open in back and had a couple of shrap holes in it. Platzhe had his britches ripped off. One gun shield was broken. No one was injured seriously. A Jap (zeke) dived into the Hainsworth (a can in our squadron) and hit just below Mt #1. It seriously injured 11 and killed two. It didn't explode. Altogether one hundred and two (102) Jap planes were downed on April 6. The planes from the carrier Essex got 59 of them. We lost fifteen. One of our planes over Okinawa ran into 15 flaks. It peeled off and went straight down. We also picked up a man up off a kingfisher that was floating around upside down. The other man was in the water and drowned while we tried to save him. That was a dirty deal. We could have saved him easily, but our officers fooled around and took their own damn time about getting there and the man quit kicking and his flying gear drug him down. Just a sample...not all days have entries, in fact most don't. One hundred sixteen pages long. Quite against the regulations to keep a war time diary, but he managed to. Anyone interested? My typing or would you rather have it photographed? By the way, the USS English is DD 696, Sumner class destroyer. His battle station was as an ammo humper for mount #2. Lots of obivious mistakes in it...he was there but like most others had no idea of what was going on or who was involved. I could go thru the letters and see what I find.
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USMC: 1970-1977. A United States Marine. We don't take kindly to idjits.
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