A U.S. Army artillery spotter, a “Grasshopper pilot” used to flying a little Piper Cub, received an unusual order just before the invasion of Leyte in 1944: He would fulfill his spotter duties in a torpedo plane off the escort carrier Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70). When Japanese battleships and cruisers surprised his task force off Samar, he had a unique view of one of World War II’s most unusual naval battles.
It was five days after the invasion. Each day I expected to receive word that the airstrip at Tacloban would be finished and I could be flown ashore and return to my unit. Just before daylight, I was sound asleep in the top bunk of my cabin, one deck below the catapult, when the general quarters alarm abruptly brought me awake. Each morning in a combat environment naval ships sounded this alarm. Everybody immediately went to battle stations. The ship had performed this exercise every morning since we left Manus in the Admiralty Islands. Nothing ever happened. I had no battle station, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. This was the dawn of the fifth day after the beaches of Leyte had been invaded and the troops were moving inland against moderate resistance. The Japanese were fighting a delaying action to give themselves time to occupy their main defensive positions around the Ormoc Valley. It later took us more than a month and a half of hard fighting and four divisions to clean them out of the valley.
Sleeping was not easy, because the ship starting launching a plane about every three or four minutes. The catapult made one heck of a racket and shook the whole ship. It crossed my mind that they sure were busy the one morning I wanted to sleep.
Suddenly, the ship shook. Simultaneously there was the sound of an explosion in the passageway. Red-hot fragments of steel came ripping through the bulkhead of my cabin. A small piece of hot steel hit me in the elbow and caused a small burn about the size of a dime. Some fragments hit the other bunk and set little smoldering fires. Jumping out of bed and using water from my canteen, I made sure they were all extinguished.
A fire extinguisher could be heard in the companionway. Sticking my head out the door, I saw a sailor directing its contents on the forward bulkhead of the passageway. I asked him if everything was okay. “Yes,” he answered, but didn’t elaborate. A magazine was located about where the sailor was working; I assumed that something had happened to the ammunition in it. Faintly, I could hear strange sounds in the distance, like thunder. On board ship there were always strange sounds to a landlubber such as myself, and the catapult was still banging away.
After dressing, I went to the head. The sailor with the fire extinguisher had left and the companionway was empty. On entering the head (it was a large one) I saw a stretcher on the deck. On it was a dead sailor covered with a blanket. Blood had seeped out from under the blanket onto the deck. I thought this was very strange—why didn’t they take the poor guy to the sick bay? At this point, I should have realized something was terribly wrong on board the ship.
Other than the sailor outside my cabin, not a soul was in the companionway. This also was unusual. Normally, there were people running around the ship at all hours of day and night. After shaving and brushing my teeth, I departed for the galley; the galley crew always knew what was happening on the ship. No one was there, however. I left for the combat information center (CIC) to find out what was happening.
As I entered the CIC, I was surprised. Everyone was all decked out in steel helmets and life preservers. In a loud voice I asked, “What the hell is going on?”
“Where the hell have you been?” was the response from the lieutenant in charge.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve been trying to get some sleep.”
“Well, half the Jap fleet is out there shooting at us! The bastards have already hit us once! You had better get your helmet and life preserver. You may need them before this is over.”
I hurried back to my cabin and picked up my helmet. Strapping on both my gun belt and Mae West, I proceeded down the passageway where the explosion had first been heard. There was a hole about eight inches in diameter through the bulkhead. Looking up, there was a matching hole through the flight deck. The enemy shell had passed downward through another cabin below and out the starboard side of the ship above the water line. You could look up through the hole and see the sky; standing on my tiptoes, I could look down through the shell hole and see water.
I quickly made a trip to the flight deck and saw smoke all around. Flashes were visible in the distance through the smoke. A few seconds later there were three splashes where an enemy salvo hit the water. Not really having enough sense at that point to be scared, I could not resist returning to the CIC. It was impossible for me to grasp what really was happening.
Once I got there, I said (in voice loud enough so everyone could hear), “You bastards have been giving me a bad time about [General Douglas] MacArthur and his propaganda that your aircraft has been dropping on Leyte announcing ‘I have returned.’ Well, [Admiral William] Bull Halsey has been screaming for the Jap fleet to come out and fight him. The sons-a-bitches are out there this morning! Now let’s see what the hell you swabbies can do about it!” A bit crazy, maybe, but that is exactly what I said.
I again left the CIC for the flight deck. A walkway went around the edge of the deck and offered some protection. As the ship rolled, I could see the water on both sides of her. This spot, at the forward edge of the superstructure, was the one I returned to as often as possible because of my fear of being trapped below decks if we sank. My recollection still was clear of those poor guys at Pearl Harbor, trapped when their ships went down.
The destroyers had laid smoke all around us. All I could see through the smoke were flashes, and then three great geysers of water went high in the air. One shell fell on one side of the ship, and two fell on the other side. As an artilleryman, I knew they had us bracketed; it was only a matter of time before another shell would hit home.
Later, I saw two splashes and felt the Fanshaw Bay shake as one shell hit the flight deck and departed out the side of the ship. I finally realized we were in a tight spot and we might not make it. When a shell hit that little carrier, the whole ship shook like an earthquake. I would hold my breath and a cold chill would go up my spine while I waited for the big bang that would blow the ship apart. I did not count them, but several shells hit us. There was no big bang, however. Later, I learned the Japanese ships shot armor-piercing shells at us.
Having no battle station and feeling helpless, I forced myself to go below to the sick bay to help with the wounded and gave some needed blood. The doctors, the dentist, and aid men all were operating. I brought water to the wounded and gave them smokes. One young sailor, with his head bandaged, asked for a cigarette. After asking a doctor, he told me to go ahead. “If he isn’t dead by now,” the doctor said, “a cigarette won’t hurt him; a third of his brain has been blown away.” The kid was still alive when I left the ship.
Toward the end of the surface battle, I returned to the flight deck. I was stunned; in the distance were seven torpedo wakes headed in our direction. “My God,” I said to myself, “is it ever going to stop?” Some of the torpedoes were skipping on top of the water. I was sure we were going to be hit. In record speed I ran to the other side of the ship and braced myself. My legs almost caved in when I jumped from the flight deck to the walkway four feet below. I could feel the ship turning hard to port. The captain later told me the torpedoes were spotted when fired by an enemy destroyer. He had little trouble avoiding them because they had been fired at too great a range. The captain maneuvered the ship, and the torpedoes missed.
After 2 hours and 45 minutes of continual surface contact and six more hits, the captain announced over the intercom that we had sailed into a rain squall, and the enemy ships had broken off the fight. Everybody on board took a deep breath, and I said a little prayer under my breath, thanking God we still were afloat.
Just after having sat down in the galley for a cup of good Navy coffee and a bite to eat, the damned alarm went off again. A voice on the loud speaker announced, “Air raid! Air raid! Air raid!” The ship’s crew still was at battle stations. Running to the flight deck, I spotted a plane off the port bow, on the down-wind leg of the normal flight pattern. As he came closer, I could see it was a Japanese plane. Every gun on board was firing at him as he flew by the side of the ship. The plane started wobbling; it must have been hit. I could clearly see the big red meatballs on its side and the wings. The pilot turned onto the base leg, then quickly turned onto the final approach and headed directly for the flight deck as if in a landing attitude. “Hell, I think the son-of-a-bitch is attempting to land,” I thought to myself.
Knowing he surely was carrying a big bomb, I kept the superstructure between the enemy plane and myself. It was about 100 yards off the stern, when the plane blew up with a tremendous explosion. I ducked behind the superstructure, and parts of the plane came bouncing down the flight deck. We had been saved again by the grace of God and some damned good shooting.
The thought again crossed my mind: What was a liaison pilot doing out here in the middle of the ocean in a mess like this? They hadn’t taught us about these things in flight school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Later, I learned what happened from my roommate, who commanded the 5-inch/38 gun mount on the fantail. “When I saw the Nip plane turn onto the final approach,” he told me, “I knew I had only one shot [and] the gun pointer was told to lay on his propeller hub. The fuze cutter was ordered to cut the fuze as short as possible. I then shouted: ‘Fire at my command!’ That bird was flying right down the tube of my gun—when everybody was set, I gave the command to fire. We all ducked for cover as the crap started to fall all around us. When the remains of the plane stopped falling, I assured myself that the gun crew and I were not hit.”
Over the years, I have pondered this kamikaze attack on the Fanshaw Bay. It has puzzled me. At anytime while on the downwind leg, 200-300 yards from the port side of the carrier, that enemy plane could have turned left and crashed into the ship. But he made no hostile attempt to fulfill his mission of slamming into the ship. He flew a perfect landing pattern. On the final approach, his angle of descent to the flight deck was such that he would have skidded along the deck until the safety cables, close to the bow, would have stopped him from going overboard. Maybe he had lost his nerve and really had planned to land his plane onto the carrier to get captured.
Only minutes after our gun crew shot down the kamikaze, I heard heavy antiaircraft fire on my right. I glanced over at the St. Lo (CVE-63), which was another “jeep carrier” like the Fanshaw Bay and sometimes referred to by her original name, the Midway. (She had carried that name until only two weeks before, when the Navy decided it wanted the name Midway for one of its new supercarriers.) She was sailing between 500 and 1,000 yards off our starboard beam. A kamikaze dove toward her flight deck through a hail of fire. His dive was almost vertical. I clearly saw the release of his bomb several hundred feet in the air. At that range he was not going to miss his target. The Zero continued its dive and followed the bomb into the flight deck.
There were two violent explosions amidships. The bomb appeared to explode down in the hangar deck, and the plane hit the flight deck near the superstructure and exploded into flames. In a minute or so the ship broke in half. Sailors could be seen jumping and falling into the water. We could not help, but a destroyer moved in and picked up survivors. The last time I saw her, both bow and stern still were afloat off our starboard quarter. Later, the captain told me she sank in 20 minutes. Thankfully, large numbers of the crew were miraculously saved.
That day was probably the most frightful, exciting, and violent in my life. Captain D. P. Johnson related what had happened during the battle. We had fought 4 battleships, 8 cruisers, and 12 destroyers. In the battle we lost two escort carriers, two destroyers, and one destroyer escort. The Fanshaw Bay was hit seven times. Eleven men were killed and many more were wounded. I did not hear how many pilots and planes were lost. The aircraft from our fleet were scattered all over the area. Many of the pilots landed or crashed on other carriers, and a number crash-landed on the unfinished field at Tacloban.
As the day wore on, and thinking about what had happened, it surprised me that I did not have more of a reaction. This was partly because it was difficult for me to realize how close we had come to disaster. I felt good, however, about having survived my baptism of fire and not making a fool of myself. There were, of course, moments when I was frightened. There were times when watching those shells land near the ship and when the kamikaze came after us when I shook like the leaves of a Rocky Mountain aspen. I am glad I was alone at those times. I did observe a couple of individuals who had lost control as I passed from place to place for various reasons. I did say a few prayers under my breath during those times when the situation was pretty hairy and I was just plain scared.
Later, during the ground fighting on Leyte when I received enemy fire while in my Cub, my mind was busy with attempting to avoid the enemy fire, but I continued the mission without a physical reaction. A delayed reaction, however, occurred after landing. As I stepped out of the aircraft, my legs just would not hold me up. I grabbed the wing strut for support.
Around 1600 the afternoon after the battle off Samar, we had a sub alert, but nothing came of it. The pilots who were still on board sat around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee in the pilots’ ready room. I made good use of the soda fountain, because I knew full well there was nothing like this on the beach.
That night, after going to bed, I read for a while but was not sleepy. The events of the day still were vivid in my mind. I had something to eat, drank hot cocoa, and did some exercises, but nothing seemed to work. I felt as fresh as a daisy and did not sleep a wink that night.
Next morning at breakfast, speaking with the ship’s doctor, he kind of laughed and said, “The old adrenal glands just haven’t stopped pumping. You can expect a conk-out at any moment.”
Two days later, on the morning of 27 October, the crew gathered on the starboard side of the flight deck. The service for the 11 men killed in the battle who were buried at sea was very sad but impressive. There was a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes while watching those brave men slip one by one from under Old Glory and go to their resting place beneath the waves. Under my breath I said to myself, “But for the grace of God Almighty, there go I.”
Lieutenant Colonel Chase flew missions over Leyte until April 1945 before participating in operations over Mindanao. He retired from the Army in 1961, and later worked for the Boy Scouts and served as superintendent of the ship repair yard at the Port of Portland, Oregon.