The celebrated story of the USS Nevada (BB-36) and the daring rump crew that fought her so gallantly during the 7 December 1941 surprise Japanese attack on U.S. forces in Pearl Harbor has never been fully or accurately told. The stories are often inaccurate and sometimes misleading.
Unlike her sister ships along Battleship Row that distant morning, the Nevada got under way, making a dramatic dash for the open sea despite a gaping torpedo wound in her port bow and bomb damage elsewhere. While passing Ten-Ten Dock on her port side, she came under a second withering attack by the Japanese bombers and received further heavy damage.
When she was abreast of the seaward end of Ford Island, the Nevada received a signal ordering her to return to harbor. By now, however, she was so severely injured she could not make the sharp turn toward East Loch. Fearing that she would sink and block the channel. Chief Quartermaster Robert Sedberry spun his wheel to port, and the wounded dreadnought eased into the mud on the south side of the channel, her momentum and/or tidal flow causing her to swing about and end up starboard side to against Hospital Point. Soon thereafter. Captain Francis W. Scanland—who went ashore on the sixth to visit with grandsons he’d never seen before—came aboard and resumed command.
The general details of Nevada's dash for freedom are not in dispute. What is—and sharply so—is the identity of the crew that conned her. First, there is the official version. In the terse language of the ship’s log, 8 to 12 watch, 7 December 1941, is this entry: “0840 Underway on various courses at various speeds, conforming to channel to stand out of harbor, Lieut-Comdr, F. J. Thomas, USNR, at conn, Lieutenant L. E. Ruff, USN, acting navigator, in conning tower.” Scanland’s action report cites the same two officers and compliments Sedberry for his calm and effective handling of the wheel and his foresight in ordering the engine room to make preparations for getting under way.
In a letter to me and in an article published in the Naval Academy Alumni Association’s Shipmate magazine (September 1987), Thomas supports the official version of the events in all essentials save one. He says he was trying to anchor the Nevada when the ship inadvertently ran aground. “I backed both engines slow. This was to 1 get us further astern ARIZONA [BB- 39]. . . . When we were headed so as I to clear that doomed ship, we went ahead one-third on both engines, sliding by ARIZONA with just enough room to spare, but not without feeling 1 the heat!” The log says the ship was grounded intentionally.
Another version is contained in Gordon Prange’s At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981):
“Although severely damaged, Nevada was still very much afloat and full of fight when Lieutenant Ruff scrambled up her side from Solace’s motor launch. He knew that, with the captain and other senior officers ashore, unusually heavy responsibilities would fall to him and to Thomas, who was below decks at his battle station. When Ruff got close enough to communicate, he suggested that Thomas run the ship’s activities below while he, Ruff, would manage topside.”
A third version posits Sedberry as having “captained” the Nevada under attack. Don Ross, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his activities while serving as a warrant machinist on board the Nevada on 7 December, has written to me:
“I talked with him [Sedberry] many times prior to his passing away. . . . Admiral Ruff was our Com Officer and was back from the Solace in plenty of time before we moved out at 0832; at that time he was not qualified for underway O.O.D. in Nevada. I have his report. Lt. Ruff told CQM Bob Sedberry to conn the ship, which he did.”
On the day of the attack, Don Landry was a quartermaster first class and the senior man in the after steering compartment, where the quartermaster division bunked. At the sound of the general quarters alarm, Landry roused his men and got them away to their duty stations and then left for his own. He passed through central station and climbed the 60 rungs of the emergency tube to the conning tower. He says: “Lt. Ruff, Communications Officer, was senior officer in the conning tower.” And in answer to my direct question, Landry stated: “I personally saw Lcdr. Thomas in Central Station when I climbed the tube to the Conning tower, I didn’t see him again that day.”
Roy Johnson, a quartermaster second class, arrived on the bridge to man his general quarters station and then was moved by Sedberry to the conning tower. He writes:
“At 0815 the Arizona blew up and then we got a message from the Arizona (before she blew) to prepare to get underway. So we did. LCDR Thomas was the senior officer aboard and went to his battle station—Central Station—to handle the damage control duties. Lt. Ruff appeared about 0830 in the Conning Tower and became the 0.0.D. and Conning Officer. . . . We received a visual signal from the “Tower”—Do not proceed out of the channel as there were subs (small 2-man jobs) in the channel. We were badly damaged and couldn’t make the hard right tum to go around Ford Island again, so Ruff and Sedberry decided to go aground at Hospital Point.”
In answer to my query, Johnson made this statement: “No. Thomas was in Central Station (Damage Control) all the time—to my knowledge. [The decision to run aground rested] solely with Ruff and Sedberry. [They] had no time or way to communicate with anyone to make such a snap decision.”
Yeoman First Class James L. Snyder was the captain’s writer at the time. During GQ he served as the captain’s talker on the JA phone circuit both on the bridge and in the conning tower.
He first manned the JV phones on the bridge to get under way. In a letter to me he recalled:
“He [Thomas] was also the Ship’s Damage Control Officer and as a result of the hits and hull damage he was urgently required in that area and only reached the Conn after ship was under way.”
Despite many corroborative accounts of Sedberry’s legendary role as captain of his ship during the battle, it just isn’t so. Either Thomas was the acting captain, or else Ruff was acting as such by default.
It strains the imagination to believe that Nevada's skipper did not know the identity of the conning crew. Scanland was an excellent officer, and except for the accident of Pearl Harbor, he surely would have moved rapidly up the promotion ladder. But if he did know the identity of the conning tower crew— assuming that they were not the ones he identified in his log and action report—why then did he report otherwise?
Would Scanland have had the time and energy to pursue the question of who did what on board the Nevada? Ask yourself what his priorities would have been during the afternoon and night of the seventh, when his ship continued to sink, when another Japanese attack was expected, when renewed firing was begun during the night on friendly aircraft thought to be the enemy.
Consider the following morning, when firerooms flooded out and auxiliary ships moved alongside and furnished pumps and power to stabilize flooding; when ammunition was being hurried aboard to replenish exhausted supplies; when gunners worked frantically to repair and train all guns on the harbor entrance where the enemy, it was thought, might appear. Think of the fires that kept breaking out in the tangle of wreckage, of the blood and gore that had to be cleaned up, of the monumental task in getting the battered ship returned to passable condition.
Under such stress and emotional pressure, can anyone say that Scanland would have found time to learn the truth? It is easy to believe that he left Nevada without conclusive answers, and when the log was finally presented to him for signature, he probably did not quibble. The future was far more important than the past.
According to Scanland’s son. Captain Francis W. Scanland, Jr.—a successful submarine skipper during World War II—orders for his father’s transfer arrived on Monday, 8 December. He was assigned command of the USS Astoria (CA-34), whose skipper had been incapacitated as a result of the Japanese attack. Since Scanland signed the Nevada’s log for the eighth, it can be assumed that he was not officially detached from her until later.
During one period of 108 days, Scanland never left the bridge of the Astoria. He earned the Navy Cross at Midway and returned to Pearl physically and emotionally drained. He died before the end of the war from an aneurism in the brain. Like the Olympic contestant who overslept and missed his race, Scanland perhaps never forgave himself for his missed moment in history. Nor did his superiors; he was promoted to commodore, but no further.
Captain Scanland says that his father never discussed the Pearl Harbor attack with him. He believes his father was so embarrassed by the events of that day—the very ones that he had trained for so carefully all of his professional life-—that he could not bring himself to talk about them. The two Scanlands were together after Pearl only twice, and then for only a few hours. Whenever the events of that day arose in conversation, father and son by mutual consent turned them aside.
If indeed there are errors in the official account of how the Nevada was handled during the Pearl Harbor attack, it is difficult to blame anyone. It is easy to believe that what was done was done in an unselfish attempt to get on with the war. Only Sedberry was hurt. He received no recognition for his travail other than a “well done” from his commanding officer. He deserved more. He should have been given a medal. Sedberry probably could not have been recommended for a medal without bringing into question the identity of the conning crew. I hope some day this wrong will be righted, for in every sense of the word Sedberry played a hero’s role that day. Remember, the task of entering and leaving. Pearl Harbor was not an easy one. Normally, a civilian harbor pilot was employed and two or more tugs were used to escort the ships in and out.
Sedberry died of tuberculosis within a year of Pearl Harbor, unheralded except for the regard accorded him by the men of the fleet.
