UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY

SIXTIETH GRADUATION ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLASS OF 1940

This is a transcript of "The Long Voyage of the Class of Forty-U. S. Naval Academy" taken from the book The Class of Forty After Fifty Years © W. M. Carpenter 1990. Original text by C. H. Hall and W. D. Lanier.

The way to victory is long. The going will be hard.
We will do the best we can with what we’ve got.

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In those first grim months after Pearl Harbor, no one had a longer harder way to go, or was called on to do more with less, than the officers and men of HOUSTON, MARBLEHEAD, LANGLEY and the old beat-up destroyers that made up the Asiatic Fleet. MARBLEHEAD was so badly mauled by Japanese bombers on February 4 that she had to withdraw for repairs. LANGLEY was sunk on February 27, trying to bring in air reinforcements. HOUSTON, in the Battle of the Java Sea, went down, guns blazing to the last. Her desperate fight against overwhelming odds set a standard of courage that would be hard to match. But the cost was high. Alva Nethken, Fred Mallory and Coleman Sellars were killed in action. Marshall Hamill, J. B. Nelson and C. D. Smith were hauled from the water and sent off to three-and-a-half years of hell in the Japanese prison camp made famous by "The Bridge on the River Kwai," building a railroad through a tropical jungle.

Buck Buchanan, attempting to escape to Australia just before the fall of Singapore, was captured after the B-18 he was riding crashed on the north coast of Java. During his years in Japanese prison camps, he constructed a radio receiver from scrounged parts and concealed it in his artificial leg. It became the internees' only source of outside news.

Over in the Atlantic, JACOB JONES was torpedoed off the Delaware Capes and went down with all hands, among them, Olie Hanson.

In April, the Doolittle Raid gave the nation a boost with the first retaliatory strike against the Japanese homeland. Early Winters in ENTERPRISE and Pancho Hunker in HORNET were among those present at "Shangri La."

In the same month, we received a personal boost with promotion to lieutenant, junior grade. Our pay, for those who were married, soared to $225 a month.

On the heels of the good news, more bad news. Corregidor surrendered, and Captain Leon Chabot, 4th Marines, went into captivity with the remnants of his company. He was to survive three years as a POW in the Philippines only to die, most tragically, when the prison ship SHINYO MARU was torpedoed by our submarine PADDLE, September 7, 1944.

In the Battle of the Coral Sea, which blunted the Japanese drive towards Australia in May, Bill Keating, Snuffy Lockett, Ed Muhlenfeld, Joe Weber, Bill Williamson and Bill Vickrey went over the side as LEXINGTON fell victim to two torpedoes and two bomb hits. Bob Allsopp, in NEOSHO, was less fortunate. He was killed when his oiler, mistakenly identified as a carrier, went down under a concerted attack by Japanese bombers.

In the Battle of Midway, a month later, Burke Gill, John Greenbacker, Joe Snyder, Harvey Vogel, Don Scheu and Sal Walline abandoned ship when YORKTOWN, after absorbing two torpedoes and three bomb hits from Jap planes, then fell victim to torpedoes from Japanese submarine I-168.

While some of us were dodging Japanese torpedoes and bombs, others were dodging German submarines and bombers on the Murmansk run. Bill Antle, Bob Kaufman and Miles Libbey, in WICHITA, were among those with vivid memories of convoy PQ-17.

For most of us, 1942 was a year of change. Some of the survivors of CALIFORNIA, WEST VIRGINIA and NEVADA stayed with their ships, raising them from the waters of Pearl Harbor and repairing and rearming them to support our amphibious forces as they fought their way across the Pacific. Most of the survivors, including all those who escaped from OKLAHOMA and ARIZONA, returned to the States for new construction. Then, as we became eligible to apply, there followed a steady stream of orders to flight training (including nine to lighter-than-air) and to submarine school. Tom McGrath, Ed O'Brien and Al Bergner went directly to submarines, at Pearl Harbor, without returning for sub school at New London. Leading the way to flight training, as befitted a Marine, Otis Calhoun won his wings in July and became our first aviator.

Given the green light, with the lifting of the two-year ban, many of us opted for the biggest change of all, marriage. This resulted in a lot of marriages, some of them the second time, "for the record." Surprisingly, and hearteningly, by far the greater part of these wartime marriages endured. With us, divorce was to be the exception rather than the rule.

In August, one of the most obscure spots in the world became a name that echoes across the years--GUADALCANAL!

The Marines led the way. John Antonelli and George Herring, with Edson's Raiders, went ashore in the first wave. As platoon leaders, and later company commanders, they sweated out the bitter and bloody months to follow.

Hard on the heels of the landing came the first of the battles that were to give Iron Bottom Bay its infamous name. Savo Island saw ASTORIA, QUINCY and VINCENNES go down under a torrent of Japanese fire in a matter of minutes. John Spears was killed by a direct eight inch hit on VINCENNES's turret two. Ray Murray, trapped in plot, went down with his ship. Ray Hundevadt, wounded, was in the water many hours before rescue. Ike Blough, Connie Carlson, Vince Healey and Carl Sander swam away from ASTORIA. Kent Bulfinch, Dick McElligott, and Jim Smith escaped from QUINCY. John Lacouture survived the sinking of destroyer BLUE.

A few hours later, Bill Greene was lost with torpedoed JARVIS.

On the night of October 11, off Cape Esperance, Sam Forter, in BOISE's main battery director, reported sighting five ships. Told to "pick out the biggest and commence firing", he started pouring out shells. In a few minutes, cruisers AOBA and FURUTAKA were burning brightly and destroyer FUBUKI was sinking. But BOISE was taking a beating in return. Her turret one was breached and a magazine exploded. Good damage control saved her, however, and she emerged limping but undaunted. For his part in the action and in the saving, Dixie Howell won the Navy Cross. Sam's brilliant shooting brought him a commendation.

Shortly afterward, in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, HORNET was beaten under by two torpedoes, a bomb, and two suiciders. Ike Blough, Ray Koshliek and Tom Wells went over the side into the water. Ike, with two ships shot from under him in the space of three months, established an unenviable record.

In the same month, having hardly had time to sew on our half-stripe, we moved up to lieutenant, senior grade.

On November 8, on the other side of the world, some fifty of us, in various battleships, cruisers and destroyers, descended on French North Africa in Operation TORCH. For many of us, it was our baptism of fire, brief, happily with no casualties, but plenty of near misses and close shaves.

A few days later, back in the Pacific, Friday the thirteenth proved unlucky indeed for a dozen ships and hundreds of sailors. On the first night of the Battle of Guadalcanal, John Hanna was killed, along with RADM Callaghan and CAPT Young, when SAN FRANCISCO was shattered by an avalanche of shells from HIEI and KIRISHIMA. Bill Guice went down with BARTON when two torpedoes broke that ship in two. Eldo Bergman was wounded when LAFFEY closed to riddle HIEI's bridge with machine gun fire and was sunk by a torpedo from a Japanese destroyer. Bob Weatherup, in FARENHOLT, was wounded by shellfire.

Next morning, John Blodgett and Tom Roddy were killed when JUNEAU, having survived the surface action, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The following night, in the battleship encounter, Marty Mulderrig suffered multiple wounds when SOUTH DAKOTA took a series of hits.

On November 30, in the Battle of Tassafaronga, Mel Abrahams went over the side when NORTHAMPTON was sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. Bill Dobie, in MINNEAPOLIS, helped keep that ship afloat after two torpedoes ripped her bowels. Bill Mack, Lou Sanders and Gene Tilton were similarly occupied in NEW ORLEANS, after a torpedo sliced off her bow up to turret one. John Hardy and Paul Paul had their hands full after a torpedo hit PENSACOLA directly under her mainmast, ruptured a fuel tank and set off a raging fire.

In 1942 several classmates who left us before graduation returned to service. Ray Skerry, commissioned from his NROTC unit when he graduated from the University of California, served in CASCO. Jake Corbett, who tells us he bilged out first class year to get married, joined the Army and became a master sergeant of military police. He retired, many years later, as Vice President, head of the personal trust department of Hanover Trust.

As 1942 drew to a close, the survivors of eleven major battles and a score of lesser engagements could hope the truly desperate times were behind us, but we saw more tough going clearly ahead.

We spent Christmas of that year in many places, some of them very distant and dismal. Some of us heard, in Pacific heat and Atlantic chill, Irving Berlin's new hit, a haunting tune, "White Christmas."