Ordeal of the Franklin

News report published in 1945

The following are news accounts written and published during the war. All are concerned with the attack on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Franklin by a Japanese dive bomber in March 1945 while conducting air operations off the coast of Japan.

Carrier Wrecked by Bombs, Gets Home Despite Big Loss

18 May 1945: The new 27,000-ton carrier Franklin, a scarred and blackened hull, with fire-crisped decks where hundreds of men died in one of the ugliest naval catastrophes of the war, has reached the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, proudly completing her ghastly 12,000-mile voyage under her own power, in a great display of seamanship and valor.

Releasing stories written weeks ago, the Navy paid tribute yesterday [17 May 1945] to the ship and her men, the dead and those who survived. More than 1,100 were lost or injured, representing roughly a third of her complement, believed to be the greatest loss on any American ship in this war. The captain's casualty roster lists 832 dead or missing and 270 wounded.

Hit at 7:07 a.m. on 19 March some 60 miles off the Japanese main islands as the fast carrier task force blasted enemy fleet remnants in the Inland Sea, the Franklin became a raging inferno of fire and explosion, and remained so for hours. As she was dispatching planes from her deck, she took two bombs, one forward and one aft.

Blasted by Lone Plane

A lone Japanese dive bomber, penetrating defense screens, sped over the ship from stem to stern, planting the heavy bombs accurately.

Instantly the planes on the deck burst into flame, their machine guns firing, their bombs going off. Ready bomb stores exploded and down below, one by one, sections of the ship blossomed into flaming death traps. Rockets were zooming in yellow flashes across the deck. High-octane gasoline spewed forth, ran in cascades over the sides, and to watchers with the rest of the fleet the great ship seemed to disintegrate.

Vice Adm. Marc A. Mitscher, in command of the force, sent permission to prepare for abandoning ship, but the commanding officer, Capt. Leslie E. Gehres, of Coronado, California, shook his head.

"We're still afloat," he said, and he and his men, as courageous a crew as ever walked a deck, kept her that way.

All day the ship burned, as rescue parties pushed through choking smoke, leading trapped men to the deck. Others jumped over or were blown into the sea. Some men were brought out alive eighteen hours later from a steaming compartment below aft.

Other warships, the cruiser Santa Fe and the destroyers Hunt and Marshall stood alongside to give aid, taking off wounded or furnishing their own firelines to the floating inferno. Other ships fought off several Japanese air attacks that day and the next.

With their controls gone and her men ordered out of the engine rooms, the big carrier steamed slowly ahead for more than an hour and a half, heading for Japan. And the Santa Fe, not knowing whether the magazines had been flooded, clung closely by, bumping and crushing their rails, so close that men crawling out on the Franklin's listing side could fall, as some helpless ones did, into the waiting arms of the Santa Fe's crew. The engines died and she was dead in the water, only 38 miles, according to the United Press, from the entrance to the Inland Sea.

Then the cruiser Pittsburgh took her in tow, for a while, until gallant men, knowing what they faced below, went down into the furious boiler and furnace compartments and finally got some of them working. Finally the ship could make headway and maneuver by using the engines.

All day the great ship blazed and burst with powder, gasoline and shell, until, as night deepened, the weary officers and men, burned and hungry, brought a semblance of control into the ship that would not sink. Her engine power was stepped up by further repair parties, and she went for home the next day, stopping at Pearl Harbor the first week of April and then heading across the Pacific at good speed, like a ghost ship, to a base for repairs.

The first day after the attack the men went without food or water. The next day a destroyer came alongside and sent over a bag of bread. Some canned pork sausage was found. This was spread on a single piece of bread. Each man received this mere mouthful. Sometime later a locker of Spam and Vienna sausage was located, as was a bread locker. Two days after the attack the men had their first hot food-a breakfast of hot soup and coffee.

The men's spirits were raised considerably when a makeshift band began to play. The band's instruments consisted of a big galley tub for a base drum, a jug for a bull fiddle, fire buckets and spoons for the drummer, two trumpets, a clarinet, a penny whistle, a guitar and an ocarina.

The Japanese the next day announced that a big carrier had been sunk. And this time the enemy boast was not unreasonable, for the ship by all standards was done, and should be today in the Pacific deeps. Naval officers and others who have seen her, blackened, with holes gaping and her compartments formless masses of twisted steel, expressed wonder that she stayed afloat. That she did, they say, was a tribute of high order, to the men whose courage and determination would not let her go, and to the designers and builders who put together staunch vessel able to take unbelievable punishment and still make it home.

—George Horne

Washington, D.C., 17 May 1945—The U.S.S. Franklin, known in the Navy as "Big Ben," had been damaged by the Japanese prior to the crippling attack of 19 March, and had returned to the battle areas only shortly before the second bombing.

This previous attack occurred off the Philippines late in October 1944 during the battle for Leyte Gulf. The "Big Ben's" planes were operating against Luzon, when a Japanese Zero scored a direct hit on the flight deck with an aerial bomb resulting in serious fires, which were brought under control two hours later. The Franklin's planes meanwhile were taken aboard by other carriers. The Franklin returned to Bremerton, Washington, for repairs.

The "Big Ben" has an active career. She was christened on 14 October 1943, and sailed from Pearl Harbor into her first battle on 16 June 1944. Between that date and her first anniversary she supported two invasions [Guam and the Palaus] and participated in six strikes against Japanese-held islands.

Smashed Carrier Saved by Bravery

Skipper and Officers Say They Never Entertained Thought of Quitting Blazing Craft

18 May 1945: Despite the tremendous explosions and fires that swept the 27,000-ton aircraft carrier Franklin after she was hit by two bombs 60 miles off the Japanese coast, the thought of abandoning ship never was considered for a moment, the carrier's skipper, Capt. Leslie E. Gehres, declared yesterday [17 May 1945].

Interviewed with some thirty of his officers and enlisted men at the Navy Public Relations Office, Capt. Gehres was liberal in his praise of the heroism and ability of the Franklin's personnel. Only their efforts and the aid of the accompanying warships, he said, made it possible for the carrier to reach port.

"The attack was an aviator's dream," the 47-year-old veteran skipper said. "We were caught while we were launching the second flight of the day.

"Great sheets of flame enveloped the flight deck and the anti-aircraft batteries," he continued. "The forward elevator rose up in the air and then disappeared and dense smoke rolled skyward. Then things started exploding all over the forward part of the ship."

Praises Heroism of Crew

The rest, Capt. Gehres said, is a story of a heroic crew that refused to believe that the Franklin, only sixteen months after she was commissioned at Newport News, Virginia, was destined to end her career on the floor of the Japanese seas. It is also a story, he said, of the great work of such ships as the cruisers Santa Fe and Pittsburgh and many destroyers, including the Miller and the Hickock, which towed and protected the Franklin while she was dead in the water.

Of her crew of more than 3,000 officers and men Capt. Gehres disclosed, 832 are dead or missing and 270 wounded, ninety of them seriously.

Commander Henry H. Hale of Gary, Indiana, the carrier's air officer, was busy launching planes when the first bomb struck.

"Flame seemed to cover the whole forward part of the ship," he said.

"The plane on the runway was picked up and turned over on its back, but the pilot, I found out later, escaped unhurt."

All Planes Lost, Four Jeeps Saved

"Every plane on the ship was lost," Comdr. Hale said, "but oddly enough four jeeps used ordinarily to pull planes into position for takeoffs were unscathed. These jeeps came in handy later when we went to work clearing the wreckage."

The ship's executive officer, Comdr. Joseph Taylor of Danville, Illinois, was standing next to the wave-off officer when the first explosion tore through the ship, he said. He was blown across the deck against the starboard lifelines, but was unhurt.

"Finding myself in one piece," he said, "I immediately made for the bridge to see how the captain was. The captain was shaken but unhurt and ordered me to ascertain the extent of damage. I spent the rest of that nightmare supervising fire control parties and arranging for a tow by the cruiser Pittsburgh."

Lieutenant (j.g.) W. R. Wassman, of New Rochelle, New York, who was assistant navigator on the carrier, told of his part in the rescue of five men trapped aft in the steering engine room.

New Rochelle Man Hero

"As soon as we could get aft," he said, "we worked our way over the hot and twisted steel to the fantail. I heard a boy moaning and after a search found him, badly hurt, lying among a group of dead. Aided by another sailor, I got the man to the safety of the deck and then went back again.

We had rescue breathers with us this time," Lt. Wassman continued, "and, holding them above the sloshing water, we worked our way through four compart­ments, toward the trapped engine room men. By shifting the water from a compartment above the engine room to another compartment we were able to get the men out."

Shipfitter First Class Herman Friedman, of the Bronx, New York, was in his quarters when the attack occurred, he revealed. He went to his battle station-repair and damage control-but stayed there only a short time, when he found the communications system out.

"I went forward for orders then," he said, "and later when organization developed went below to counter-flood compartments to correct the ship's list. I was not hurt, but I was certainly scared."

Franklin Captain Urges 500 Awards

Names Chaplain, Engineer and Doctor as Outstanding Heroes of the Disaster

Pearl Harbor, 8 April 1945—Nearly every man aboard the aircraft carrier Franklin turned out to be a hero.

For especial bravery the captain has recommended 500 awards including two Congressional medals of Honor and twelve Navy Crosses.

The outstanding hero, according to Capt. Leslie E. Gehres, commanding officer, was a 40-year-old Jesuit priest, Lt. Comdr. Joseph Timothy O'Callahan, USNR, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, ship chaplain, and, said the captain fervently, "the bravest man I have ever seen." Formerly head of the Mathematics Dept. at Holy Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts, a bespectacled, scholarly man with membership in a number of learned societies, Chaplain O'Callahan has been in the Navy since 1940 but joined the Franklin only seventeen days before she was hit.

Others included Lt. (j.g.) Donald A. Gary, USN, commissioned two years ago after more than twenty years as an enlisted man, and the assistant flight surgeon, Lt. Comdr. James L. Fuelling, 31 years old, of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Was at "Toughest Place"

"Father O'Callahan," said Capt. Gehres, "was every place, and every place was the toughest. He set up the first receiving station for the wounded and helped the medical corpsmen. He was giving the last rites of the Church to badly wounded, and went around encouraging men fighting fires. I would look down from the bridge to the deck and see him leading the way into dense smoke clouds. He would reappear and take more men in. Once an explosion came right where he stood, and a man on his left was killed. Father O'Callahan came out of it okay. Without hesitating he took the man on his right and went ahead fighting fire.

"He made several trips below decks as the ship reeled with explosions and turned crisp from the terrific heat. He helped wet down explosives in a magazine and, in another, helped pass out ammunition for jettisoning. When the crisis was over he led men below for bodies, preparing them for burial."

The Jesuit priest, who formerly served on the U.S.S. Ranger, has a brother, Neill, living in New York. His mother lives in Cambridge. Only recently he learned that a sister, a nun, had been liberated in the Philippines.

Lieutenant Gary, assistant engineer­ing officer, will always be remembered by the men still alive among the more than three hundred entrapped seamen whom he led from a lower messing compartment. He was at his boiler emergency station when the attack came. Stifling smoke poured in a she stumbled aft to the mess room, only a few minutes behind Lt. Comdr. Fuelling.

Leads Trapped Men Out

Lieutenant Gary remained there nearly an hour. The situation was desperate, with ventilation growing worse. Looking around, he noticed an opening in an air uptake, and assuring the men he would return he started up, returning a few minutes later to start the men out.

First he took ten men, each of them clasping the hands of others to form a chain. Leaving them on the flight deck he came back for a larger group, and then a third, taking all men still alive. The canister on his rescue breather was not functioning, and Lt. Gary was choking. Hearing that six men had been trapped in an evaporator room for six hours, he donned another breather and went to lead them out.

It was also Lt. Gary who led two others down into the engine room that first night to try lighting a boiler. They wore rescue breathers, for the temperature was 130 degrees. Despite the apparent hopelessness, they did get two boilers going, so the Franklin could make headway. In his "spare" time Lt. Gary was seen single-handedly fighting fire on the flight deck, tirelessly organizing fire parties, repeatedly entering dangerous places.

Lieutenant Gary previously served in Third Naval District headquarters in New York City. His wife and two-year-old son live in Oakland, California.

Doctor Last to Leave

The last man to leave the mess compartment from which Lt. Gary found an escape route was Dr. Fuelling. Unable to reach his sick bay battle station, he had taken charge in the compartment where it was said, his voice of command rose above the excited babble of the men, many of whom were novices at war, experiencing their first action. He ordered them to remain quiet, to stop shouting and to relax. As they waited the ship shook again and again with great explosions.

"I tried to distract their minds from what was going on," the doctor said. "Someone suggested that we pray, and pray we did."

Almost on the verge of exhaustion himself, the doctor, on reaching the deck, fell to the bloody task of giving first aid to men suffering from burns and injuries. He directed evacuation of wounded to the Santa Fe and worked ceaselessly for hours.

The doctor, whose wife and two daughters live in Indianapolis, and his parents in Woodburn, Indiana, was commissioned in the Navy in 1940. He came aboard the Franklin the day she was commissioned, having previously served on the Saratoga.

All the survivors spoke of the five gallant seamen caught in the post known as "steering aft," just over the propellers. One telephone line functioned from the bridge to their post, and another line to the engine room was in operation, so they relayed bridge orders to the engines. It wasn't until midnight of the first day, some eighteen hours after they went to their station, that they were freed.

Two heroic rescuers made three attempts to reach them—Lt. (j.g.) Robert Wassman of New York City and Third Class Quartermaster Gilbert P. Abbott of Binghamton, New York. Mr. Abbott collapsed from his efforts, and Lt. Wassman organized a party, finally reaching the trapped men through the compartment overhead.

The Franklin, commissioned on the East Coast, had in her complement many from New York and the metropolitan area.

Vincent F. Matzen, 28, Aviation Chief Ordnanceman, of Queens, New York, spent four hours in the water after the explosion before he was rescued.

Edward D. Mesial, Storekeeper Second Class, of Flushing, Queens, was trapped below for a while but crawled out and was rescued.

Rocco J. Caputo, Fireman First Class, of Union City, New Jersey, jumped into the water from the fantail when shrapnel from exploding bombs raked it.

William J. Nott of Groton, Connecticut, Chief Machinist's Mate, became a chief as a result of heroic action, and at the age of 20 is the youngest chief petty officer of the crew.

Gerald Smith, Fireman First Class, of Oswego, New York, risked his life twice to keep a fire hose going.

Seaman First Class Henry J. Mozdiak and Machinist's Mate Third Class Calvin F. Corrigall, both of Buffalo, New York, were two others who helped save the flattop.

—Clinton Green

Toll on Franklin Laid to Own Bombs

Witness Says Explosives Set Off Gasoline and Turned Ship Into a Blazing Inferno

Aboard the U.S.S. Santa Fe in the Western Pacific, 19 March (delayed)—When Japanese bombs struck the huge Essex-class carrier, the U.S.S. Franklin, 19 March, off the southern coast of Japan, one of the most appalling losses of American lives in our naval history was caused by the carrier's own bombs and by 100-octane gasoline tanks as they exploded and blazed for hours.

Scenes of indescribable horror took place on the flattop. Men were blown off the flight deck into the sea, burned to a crisp in a searing, white-hot flash of flame that swept the hangar deck or trapped in compartments below and suffocated by smoke. Scores drowned. Other scores were torn by jagged chunks of shrapnel.

I was the only war correspondent aboard, a dazed survivor of the holocaust only because I was below decks at breakfast at the time in an area that was unhit.

800 of Crew Rescued

The rescue of the crippled carrier, towed flaming and smoking from the very shores of Japan and the saving of more than 800 men, fished out of the sea by protecting cruisers and destroyers, will be an epic of naval warfare. Heads bobbed in the water for miles behind the carrier. Men floated on life rafts, or swam about in the chilly water to seize lines from the rescue ships and be hauled aboard.

Countless deeds of heroism and superb seamanship saved the carrier and about two-thirds of the ship's more than 2,500 men. The tenacity of the Franklin's skipper, Capt. Leslie E. Gehres, who refused to abandon her, and the aid of protecting ships and planes virtually snatched the carrier from Japanese waters to be repaired and fight again. Fire and damage control parties who stuck with the ship performed valiantly.

The carrier was all but abandoned, although the "abandon ship" order never was given. The air group and about 1,500 of the crew were sent to the U.S.S. Santa Fe, a light cruiser that came alongside, or were picked out of the sea. A skeleton crew of some 690 remained aboard to save the ship, as she listed nearly 20 degrees. The Franklin's planes already aloft alighted safely on other carriers.

Navy men said the Franklin took more punishment than any other carrier ever received-and still remained afloat. It was her own terrifically destructive bombs and rockets, loaded on planes and decks for a strike against the Japanese Empire, that created havoc. The Japanese plane sneaked in, swept across the deck, and launched its bombs at the precise moment when they would cause the most destruction.

First Combat Since October

The Franklin, one unit of the mighty task force smothering Japanese airpower, was participating in her first combat action since last October. Her planes joined the strike against Kyushu Island at the southernmost tip of Japan, 18 March. Their first day's operation ran up a score of seventeen Japanese planes shot out of the air, seven destroyed on the ground and twelve damaged, offset by the loss of four planes and three pilots.

The next morning the Franklin stood 66 miles off Japan. Combat patrol planes and fighters had been launched long before dawn. A powerful striking force of planes, loaded with all the munitions they could carry, began launching about seven o'clock, almost an hour after sunrise. The sky was dull, leaden and overcast, as if glowering forbiddingly. Eight Corsair fighters and eight or nine Helldiver bombers already had roared off the flight deck.

Massed after on the flight deck, engines roaring for the warm-up, wings still folded like those of misshapen birds, were more planes—Corsairs, Helldivers and thick-bodied Avenger torpedo planes. Each was loaded with 500-pound bombs, 250-pound bombs, or rockets, missiles of great destructive power. This was the moment, about 7:07 o'clock, that the Japanese plane skimmed in undetected and flew the length of the ship.

Deck Becomes Raging Inferno

One bomb crashed through the flight deck forward of the "island" and exploded on the hangar deck below, wrecking the forward elevator. Another big hole was just aft of the "island" structure.

The initial blast set fire to gasoline and some twenty-two more planes on the hangar deck below, each gassed and armed with bombs and rockets. Instantly the hangar deck became a raging inferno, snuffing out the lives of virtually every man at work on the planes. Bombs and rockets exploded with shattering blasts.

The crew was not at battle stations. No Japanese planes had been reported in the vicinity. General quarters condition had been eased and many men, dog-tired from nights of alarms, had been released to go to breakfast. One of the tragedies was the long line of enlisted men dammed up on the hangar deck to enter a hatch leading to their mess hall below. Presumably all were killed instantly when the white-hot flash swept the deck. Their bodies remained in the area for hours, many with their clothing burned off and even dog tags melted.

Fifteen minutes after there was another series of heavy explosions that jarred the carrier to her keel. Planes on the flight deck blew up some minutes after the bomb hit, sending rockets arching off the deck like a giant fireworks display. Some of the pilots escaped by leaping overboard to swim to destroyers. The "island" control structure was riddle with shrapnel, killing many men.

The public address system was blown out immediately, making communication impossible. For some time the ship made headway at eight knots, then finally stood dead in the water.

Location Determines Fate

This flattop is about as long as three city blocks; as high as a four-story building. She has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of steel bulkheads enclosing water-tight compart­ments. One was killed, or is still living, depending on where he happened to be. Each person saw only what was happening in his own little confined area, unless he survived the hail of shrapnel on the hellish flight deck.

It was much like an artillery bombard­ment of a skyscraper building. Persons in one room, taking a direct hit, would be blown to bits, while those in an adjacent one might escape unscathed. No human power could have saved the men under direct bomb explosions or on the fire-swept hangar deck.

Each man's escape was a bit of drama, although the majority of the casualties occurred in the initial blast. Rescue scenes were taking place all over the ship and one saw only what was occurring in his own circumscribed area.

A. J. Russo, Seaman First Class, of Brooklyn, New York, was in the chiefs' quarters with about thirty enlisted men. The nearby sick bay had been hit, he said, and was burning. He did not know how many sick were removed.

"We sent up three fellows," he said, "to find a way out. They went up to the hangar deck, saw a scuttle open, and came back. Then we formed a line. There were about six dead in the compartment. We prayed over their bodies, then started up. The 40 mm and 20 mm shells were going off, bursting around us, so about twenty jumped over the side."

Rescued by New Yorker

I had just sat down to breakfast in the warrant officers' wardroom. I had taken one bite. About twenty other persons were at the two tables, covered with snow-white table cloths. Suddenly there was a dull clanging explosion like the bedlam of a thousand boiler factories. The carrier shuddered. No one moved.

"We've been hit!" someone cried.

The announcement was superfluous. Everyone knew it. More explosions followed, each jarring the ship. They appeared to come from the after area. Men's faces around me turned pale. We were frightened, and admitted it. Everyone wondered whether the magazines were going up, and whether the ship was sinking. Smoke began seeping through the ventilator shaft in the ceiling.

Thirty or forty minutes after the bombing, minutes that seemed an eternity, a door opened and Chief Boatswain Chester Joseph Spiewak of New York City, a man with a profound knowledge of the ship, came in. He had been walking in an adjacent passageway when the blast picked him up, hurled him accurately through an open steel doorway, and slammed him on his back on the deck 40 feet beyond.

"You guys better get the hell out of here," he greeted us. "I think I can find a way."

The group started single file, taking the wounded along. Mr. Spiewak went to a ladder (stairway), unscrewed a scuttle giving a small circular opening to the deck above, and found the passageway clear. We went forward through numerous passage­ways, waded through some water, and emerged on the forecastle deck at the bow of the ship, a region roofed over by the hangar deck. About 500 men were on that deck.

The fight to save the mighty carrier began immediately, although commanding officers on other ships believed it impossible. Damage and fire control parties labored indomitably amidships playing fire hoses on the flames while shrapnel burst around them. Captain Gehres, standing on the bridge at the time, was knocked down by the blast and almost suffocated by smoke. He was uninjured.

"I won't abandon this ship," he told his commanding officers.

Commander Joe Taylor, Executive Officer, standing on the flight deck, also was floored by the blast. He immediately began fighting fires, jettisoning ammuni­tion, assisting the wounded and visiting various parts of the ship to serve as an inspiration to the men aboard, Lt. Comdr. David Berger of Philadelphia, Pennsyl­vania, the ship's public relations officer, reported.

Each succeeding explosion appeared to make the loss of the ship inevitable. The captain, alone, could make the decision and his faith held fast. Two flag officers aboard shortly were transferred to a destroyer by "travelers."

Captain Harold C. Fitz, commanding the U.S.S. Santa Fe, a light cruiser, was ordered to assume command of the rescue operations within an hour after the bombing. Four destroyers were detailed to assist.

Rescuer Risks Own Ship

Hazards of the rescue work were well known to Capt. Fitz, who had been a witness to the explosion of the U.S.S. Princeton's magazines, when the U.S.S. Birmingham was alongside fighting fires and receiving crew personnel. If the magazines blew up, his own ship would be hurt. To tie up, dead in the water, gave a perfect target for land-based Japanese planes only minutes away. But several thousand lives were at stake in the event that the Franklin went down. Captain Fitz did not hesitate.

Sightseers were ordered below decks and the cruiser's five fire hoses were rigged. Life rafts and nets were thrown over the side. The cruiser began picking men out of the sea, some of whom were wounded. Her deck crew hauled on the lines and tugged the survivors aboard.

Lines were shot to the Franklin, even as a terrific explosion shook the Franklin's stern. The cruiser, small by comparison, appeared to stand only half the length of the enormous carrier. The first wounded man was received on the cruiser at ten o'clock, crossing the water gap on a stretcher swinging on the lines, three hours after the bomb hit.

Fifteen minutes later the Santa Fe lost her position on the Franklin. Forward a radio antenna on the Franklin was raking the life line. The carrier had lost steering control, and there was doubt whether her magazines had been flooded. As the lines were cut, consternation showed on the faces of the men on the sloping carrier decks.

The Santa Fe circled the Franklin. Captain Fitz came in cutting across the carrier's bow at 25 knots, turned hard to starboard, and stopped his ship abruptly, her engines reversed, exactly alongside the carrier. He kept his engines going, forward and in reverse, to maneuver. Every sailor who saw the approach marveled at the seamanship, and it was long the talk of the rescue.

The two ships pounded together in the swells. Bringing his ship exactly alongside, despite the damage she would take, was necessary, Capt. Fitz believed, because there was no time to evacuate more than a thousand persons by "travelers." The ships had to touch, and did.

Escape Over Radio Antenna

Men immediately began leaving from the main deck of the Franklin to the forward 6-inch gun turrets of the cruiser. Others dropped down lines to the cruiser's deck. Over a projecting radio antenna from the Franklin, men scrambled wildly, slipped and jumped to the deck.

A catwalk was finally placed between the light deck of the carrier and the top of one of the cruiser's turrets. The hundreds massed on the flight deck streamed across until the crowd seemed to melt away.

A broken 3- or 4-inch gasoline line in the after part of the hangar deck spilled flaming 100-octane fuel for several hours, turning that part into a cauldron of fire. Burning gasoline spilled over the side of the carrier and blazed on the sea below. Fire hoses from the cruiser would not reach this area.

"I was watching and saw three men go into the fire and smoke and shut that line off," L. E. Blair, Chief Carpenter on the cruiser, of Williamsburg, Kansas, related. "It was about three hours after the ship was hit. It wasn't until then that they were able to begin to bring the fire under control. I don't know who they were, but if those boys are alive, they sure deserve a medal."

Mr. Blair said that 40 mm shells were going off "like firecrackers" and finally, 5-inch shells on one of the after gun mounts began exploding, cutting two of the cruiser's five fire hoses. Flames blazed around the mounts, even coming out gun muzzles. A final explosion at the stern of the carrier rocked her again about eleven o'clock, four hours after the attack.

Just before 12:30 o'clock, five and one-half hours after the bombing, the Santa Fe cast off, her rescue job finished. She had taken aboard all who were to go. In the two and a half hours she was tied up to the carrier, she had received 826 persons from the ship and the sea, including more than ninety wounded.

One destroyer, the Hunt, with a normal complement of about 200, had taken 417 sailors from the sea. Another, the Marshall, had picked up 212. Scattered among seven ships were more than 1,000 more of the Franklin's officers and crew. Still other pilots had landed on various carriers of the task force.

Sailors on the cruiser gave up their bunks and clothing to survivors from the Franklin. One sailor came aboard wearing an admiral's life jacket. Another was wearing a commander's coat. Completely fagged out, many lay down and quickly fell asleep.

Meanwhile another cruiser, the U.S.S. Pittsburgh, picked up some survivors from the water, then approached and cast a line to the Franklin. A towing cable was hauled to the Franklin, which had no workable equipment to lift it. The Santa Fe's winches were used to hoist the cable from the sea, and pass it to the Franklin. The line was made fast.

The still-smoking Franklin was placed in tow, limping along south at three knots. Destroyers and cruisers continued to circle.

About one o'clock a Japanese plane slipped through the protecting air patrol and made a bomb run on the carrier. Its bombs sent up a geyser of water at the stern of the ship only thirty minutes after the transfer of personnel was completed. Survivors aboard the Santa Fe, still clinging to life jackets and steel helmets, dashed below decks as the anti-aircraft fired.

Two hours later another Japanese plane appeared in the skies, but did not make a bomb run. Both were re­ported shot down by protecting combat air patrol planes.

The tortuous tow picked up speed gradually to put nautical miles between it and the Japanese Empire. The impossible was happening. The unsinkable Franklin was heading toward safety almost from the shores of Japan.

The Japanese pilot who bombed the Franklin was shot down by the air group commander of the Franklin himself, in meager retaliation for the blow.

—Alvin S. McCoy

Where Catastrophe Struck Heroic U.S. Carrier

During an American strike at Japan's Inland Sea the U.S.S. Franklin was struck by two enemy bombs as she was about to launch planes at a point some 60 miles from the entrance to the Inland Sea (cross). Despite terrific destruction the carrier made her way to Pearl Harbor and then to New York (inset), a voyage that covered more than 12,000 miles. On 14 October 1944—the exact date of her first anniversary—she was attacked by four Japanese torpedo planes just as the last of her own aircraft was coming aboard after strikes against Formosa. Some of the torpedoes came close. One man was killed and nine were wounded aboard the Franklin, and Lt. Daniel M. Winters of Brooklyn, New York, had the seat of his trousers ripped by the wing tip of a downed Japanese plane that skidded in flames across the Franklin's flight deck.

 

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) burning and listing after being hit by two bombs off Japan on 19 March 1945.

Franklin photographed by PHC Albert Bullock from the cruiser USS Santa Fe (CL-60), which was alongside assisting with firefighting and rescue work. The carrier is afire and listing after she was hit by a Japanese air attack while operating off the coast of Japan—the crew is clearly seen on flight deck. After the attack the vessel lay dead in the water, took a 13° starboard list, lost all radio communications, and broiled under the heat from enveloping fires. Many of the crewmen were blown overboard, driven off by fire, killed or wounded, but the hundreds of officers and enlisted who voluntarily remained saved their ship through sheer tenacity. The casualties totaled 724 killed and 265 wounded, and would have far exceeded this number if it were not for the exemplary work of many survivors. (Naval History and Heritage Command 80-G-273880)