Strean, Bernard M., Vice Adm., USN (Ret.)

Admiral Strean: This was the big attack. It was called the first battle of the Philippine Sea. I believe they still call that the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The other one, the second battle of the Philippine Sea is now the battle for Leyte Gulf. But these hundreds of airplanes, they all disap-peared, nobody there! but then you'd keep picking up one and two and three around there. That afternoon my friend on a dif¬ferent carrier, a fellow named Charles Brewer who was the Commanding Officer of a squadron, went out to make an attack on Guam and he got shot down by Japanese airplanes that were in the air. This was in the afternoon. Where did they come from? It appeared that the Japanese (and I believe it was borne out) had shot their whole wad on this one big attack from the carrier decks, and their airplanes were to land on Guam. I guess if everything worked out perfectly they probably would have shot down all our airplanes and sunk our carriers and then they'd have the whole thing to themselves, but it was ineffective. Then we didn't know how much damage we'd done and to try to get a pilot's idea of what kind of an airplane he shot down was difficult. He is quite excited and he'd get just glimpses, and speed makes a difference in your recognition and sight.

We wondered where the ships came from, and so the whole fleet was brought together again (I mean planes back on deck) and waited until they found the ships, their fleet, because there must be a fleet out there. They found the fleet: this was the next afternoon - not the day of the first battle of the Philippine Sea but it was the 19th and the 20th - it was the evening of the 20th. We sat all day long waiting for the information. When they came out with the information it was in error one degree which was 60 miles out of position, and then after we got in the air they corrected the position. They launched us all, everybody they could, and sent us out to attack their fleet.

John T. Mason, Jr.: Now this was in the evening, you said?

Admiral Strean: Four o'clock in the evening is when they launched us. The enemy was about 250-300 miles distant. Mitscher was in charge of the task force, and it was going to be well after dark when we'd get back. But we were night qualified and they were going to send us out anyway. We'd arrive over the enemy before the end of daylight.

I was leading the fighter sweep for the whole fleet, the whole task force. We had several squadrons of fighters there and we went out first to sweep the area of their defending aircraft. So we got there first and we saw their fleet. There was nobody to defend them7 there was nothing in the air that we could find. So we waited until our bombers came in, still sweeping the area to keep enemy planes from destroying any of our airplanes.

Our bombers came in. Then they had several task groups deployed with destroyers all around in a circle, in a perfect circle around these carriers. They had a cruiser or a battleship (I think they were cruisers) supporting these carriers with anti-aircraft fire. Now when our bombers got there and started down on them they did a tight circle turn while our bombers came down. They fired all kinds of colored ammunition; there were several different colors of their bursting antiaircraft shells. It was quite a sight. It was about dark when our people finished bombing them. When the last bomber squadron was in, we fighters had bombs (we were carrying bombs in case we didn't have to fight) so then we made an attack on them. I was credited with a bomb hit on the Taka aircraft carrier, which was a large merchant converted aircraft carrier and one of their larger and important ones.

Then we started back. It was kind of bad weather, towering cumulus, and it was dark and difficult to get together. I think I could only find about four people to lead back. I led them back to the carrier, which was about 350 miles away, and when we got back there it was drizzling rain. That was that greatest fiasco the Navy ever had. You've undoubtedly heard about that business where they had the lights turned off on the carrier and they claimed that there were Japanese pilots in the landing circle with Zeros. When I first got back there I found my own carrier with our direction finding, they called it a HAYRAKE, but then it was so dark, in making the turn I apparently found another carrier. (You couldn't recognize a carrier except by its wake and shape when you got close enough to it). Well, others were circling this carrier and having lots of trouble on deck and so on; there must have been about 30 people in that circle, but I got down in the circle. You're only supposed to have six down there, but I thought if they couldn't get aboard I could. Every time I came around it was foul deck and they gave me the wave-off every time.

Finally that carrier turned out to be a light carrier, a small one, I've forgotten the name of it, but they turned off the lights and told us to get away. I thought that was damned unfeeling of them for here we were about to get our feet wet.

John T. Mason, Jr.: What was your fuel situation?

Admiral Strean: I still had some fuel: I had about 30 gallons. The fighters did all right, but the bombers were going in the water one after the other. This was all part of the confusion, people saying they were going in the water and carriers seeing these things and throwing in these float lights. But I, after (without exposing who I was) telling the carrier what I thought about them, pulled up and got on the HAYRAKE again and started searching for my own carrier. Every carrier was surrounded, and you couldn't get lined up unless you went close to the carrier. You could see the deck then, and then you would try to come around and get in position by seeing the wake back aft. In making my - in looking for a carrier I must have made approaches on perhaps four or five carriers, and one of them was a battleship, but I didn't have anything else to do. I didn't know what the hell - I was frustrated and didn't know where to go from here; I was trying to figure out what will I do now, so I just continued my approach. Gee, that battleship - they turned on the lights, they fired very pistols, and yelled for "pilot trying to land on the battleship, get away, get away!"

Well, I pulled up and got again on the HAYRAKE and went back to my own carrier, and I kept telling them to turn on the lights because there were too many people going in the water. Finally they turned on the lights, and they lit up everything.

John T. Mason, Jr.: This is when Mitscher gave the order?

Admiral Strean: Yes. Everybody claims he did it, but I claim I was the one they could hear bitching about it and asking them to do it. Then they not only turned on the lights but they turned on vertical searchlights beams. So it was like a carnival out there at that time. I circled my home carrier and finally got aboard, but the first question you asked that night was, "What ship is this?" because you couldn’t tell one ship from the other.

We had a case, which I think is phenomenal, where two pilots went by the carrier, broke up, both came around and got aboard on their first pass. But they were on different carriers, and that's how confused things were. In another case two people were coming in, stacked up like this, and the signal officer could only see the front one. He was giving them signals. The signal officer couldn't see the top fellow but that pilot could see the signal officer and he was taking the signals that were being given for the first one. They both landed on the same carrier without touching each other. One went over the top of the other one.

(Note: Due to edits, corrections, and/or amendments to the original transcription draft, there are some inconsistencies between the recording and the text.)