This book is centered on the USS Gambier Bay, an escort carrier, from the laying down of its keel to its final engagement with the enemy at The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23–26 October 1944. Another account of this battle, focusing on the destroyers involved, is the excellent The Last Stand of the Tine Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer.
The Gambier Bay was one of 122 escort carriers built by the US in World War II. Smaller (they carried approximately 24 aircraft compared to a fleet carrier's 72-90), slower (17 knots compared to 33 knots), underarmed (one five inch gun compared to twelve five inch guns), and unarmored, the singular advantage of the escort carrier was that they could be built faster and cheaper than fleet carriers (of which 29 were built compared to the 122 escort carriers.)
Escort carriers were used primarily as convoy escorts to suppress submarines. In the Pacific, they were also used as additional support of landings in the island hopping campaign.
Hoyt does a good job of chronicling the construction of the Gambier Bay, the training of is crew, and it brief history, culminating in its sinking at Leyte Gulf, the only occasion of an aircraft carrier being sunk by a battleship.
A couple of excerpts.
I liked Hoyt's description of the quotidian peace, just before December 7th. With our hindsight, knowing the global conflagration to follow, and the 400,000 Americans about to die in the next three and a half years, it seems like a still pond before the boulder crashes in. Page 1.
On December 6, 1941, Americans were living their lives as usual, for the most part. To be sure, the war in Europe had brought new tensions. Over a year earlier, President Roosevelt had declared a state of national emergency. Many young men had been called by the draft, and others had enlisted in the service. In the eastern half of the country in particular, most people knew someone who had gone to Canada to enlist and "get in the fight" or someone who was talking about doing so. But on the whole, the concerns of Americans on this day were those of a nation that hoped not to be involved in war.
In Manila, President Manuel Quezon of the Philippine Commonwealth government indicated his hope that persons who did not have to remain in that capital city would not. The statement was widely interpreted by the press to mean a call to American civilians to leave the islands. Indeed, many had done so already as tensions grew between the western powers and Japan, but a ship was supposed to be leaving in two days for San Francisco. Hundreds were trying to get aboard her.
Singapore that day was put on war footing, and all servicemen were called to their duty stations. In Honolulu, columnist James H. Chun of the Star-Bulletin wrote that the United States and Japan we're just then closer to war than at any time since Commodore Matthew C. Perry had opened the Japanese islands to foreign trade nearly a hundred years before. If only the negotiations in progress in Washington could stave off disaster, said Mr. Chun, the tension would certainly ease.
But most people in Honolulu where more concerned with the expected shortage of Christmas trees for the season, and with the social activities looming in the holidays. The Navy contingent had a round of parties coming up. The Honolulu Community Theater had just closed a presentation of Mr. and Mrs. North which had been hailed as an an enormous success. Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance and his family were busy settling in at their new house at 4586 Aukai Street in the fashionable Kahula District. To be sure, the Pacific had been alive with rumors for weeks and a fleet of B-17 bombers had been dispatched from California to shore up the air defenses of Hawaii and the Pacific Fleet. A message had also come from a British agent in Manila that the Japanese were massing in Indochina and were ready to move in force in the Pacific. But in Los Angeles the big news that Saturday was that the arch-rivals of the south, University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, had fought all afternoon beneath the sun in the Rose Bowl and emerged with a 7–7 tie. In San Francisco, the big news was that Maxim Litvinov, the new Soviet ambassador to United States, had just arrived by air from Siberia. The Russians, who had been regarded with deep suspicion since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, were considered to be heroic fighters for freedom, since Hitler had invaded the USSR six months earlier. In Washington, much of the talk was about America's defense posture. Navy Secretary Knox released his annual report on December 6, announcing proudly that the U.S. Navy had never been stronger, with 325 news ships and 2,059 new aircraft delivered. Off in Kansas City, Sen. Harry S. Truman was talking about government waste, not war. In Pittsburgh, newspaper readers were enwrapped in the story of the Mantle Club, supposedly a social club of national scope, which had turned out to be a first-class swindle designed to mulct the public of millions of dollars for uniforms and other "club" regalia. Nineteen indictments were handed down on December 5 in Pittsburgh. From the Middle West came reports of new ways of raising money for defense bonds: bond parties, at which everyone subscribed before they started dancing. In upstate New York, much of the talk was about strikes. The Chevrolet plant in Buffalo was about to be struck, and labor difficulties seemed to be bothering most heavy industry. Down in Georgia, when writer Vereen Bell picked up the newspaper, the big story was from Atlanta, where the Southeast Pipeline Company had just completed a new line running from Chattanooga to Port St. Joe, Florida, that was expected to solve the shortage of natural gas.
Down in Jacksonville, Louise Sherrod was much more interested in a news story from Miami Beach. Pictures of Sgt. William Buckley of the Army Air Corps and his wife Lila Jean were all over the newspapers. Sergeant Buckley and Jean were something like hero and heroine – symbols of the times. The sergeant had wanted desperately to become a pilot, but air corps regulations stipulated that only single men were taken for flight duty. Seeing the sergeant's distress, Lila Jean had divorced him, he had gone to flight school, passed his tests, become an airman, and then was allowed to get married.
Then he and Lila Jean had gotten married again. This subject was of more than a little interest to Louise Sherrod, for it had not been so very long before that she had broken with her own aviator.
There were echoes of warlike behavior about. In New York, a crowd downtown watched in horror that day as an Army Air Corps fighter exploded over the city. But even bigger news to many was the inauguration of a Pan American Airways clipper service to Africa. The Gallup poll was not concerned that day with how Americans felt about Germany, Japan, or the possibility of war. The burning issue was the American attitude toward vitamins. And the New York Times turned its attention in its lead editorial to the pressing problems of the Hundred Neediest Persons Fund. As the day ended, and Americans retired to their beds, they looked forward to a quiet pre-Christmas Sunday in which they would digest the Sunday newspapers, read the ads for next week's Christmas shopping, and then turn on the radio toward evening to hear Eddie Cantor and Charlie McCarthy and Jack Benny. America was at peace, even though it wasn't an easy peace.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment