Chapter 25 Version 1
1965
“We were on the most protected ship in the fleet” said
Stanley sitting by his pool on a Sunday evening and watching the two inch waves
lap into the pool’s side channels that took water from the surface and filtered
it in Stanley’s basement before returning the clean water through a three inch
pipe in the side of the pool. “All the admirals and generals were on my ship so
we were on the safest ship in the fleet. I would go up on the tower and watch
the landings through binoculars.”
It was just after New Year’s in 1944 and the AGC-3 USS Rocky
Mount was being readied for its first mission after reaching Pearl Harbor on
Dec 27,1943. AGC stood for Auxiliary General Communications which purposefully
masked its assignment. The AGC ships served as the amphibious task force
flagships carrying navy admirals along with marine and army generals. Sailors
were told to say that the ship was a communications ship. It was lightly armed
so that it did not attract undue attention.
On January 10th 1944 Rear Admiral R.K.Turner
boarded and made the Rocky Mount his flagship. Also boarding was marine Major
General H.M.Smith and army Major General C.H.Corlet and their staffs. The Rocky
Mount was loaded with ammunition and prepared for its mission as the amphibious
command flagship invading the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific Ocean. Its
first landing island would be Kwajalein and then on to Eniwetok Atoll, also in
the Marshall Island chain. After leaving Pearl on Jan 22 the task force arrived
at Kwajalein on Jan 31. On Feb 4th Kwajalein was secured and the
next day, Admiral Chester Nimitz flew in on a PB2Y Coronado “flying boat” for
an inspection of the island. There was no time to wait for an ACORN unit to get
the airstrip functional. Parts of ACORN 20 and ACORN 21 were being dispatched
from Barber’s Point NAS in Hawaii during the battle. Nimitz boarded the Rocky Mount and returned command
back to Turner on Feb 11th after making trips to inspect Kwajalein.
The
first place we invaded was the Marshall Islands – spent some time there. The
islands were beautiful the first morning we got there, but after a few hours
there were only a few trees left. I could have gone over to see it but I had
seen enough. – Stanley Zywar’s handwritten comments in the Combat Duty
section of “The Service Record”.
Admiral Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur were at
loggerheads concerning how to proceed to defeat the Japanese. There were three
possible strategies. Establishing a base in China through Burma that could bomb
Japan was one strategy. A second strategy favored by MacArthur was attacking
through Borneo and up into the Philippines to disrupt Japan’s source of oil
from Southeast Asia and make it difficult to supply its island conquests in the
Central Pacific. When MacArthur withdrew from the Philippines leaving only the
island fortress of Corregidor in Allied hands in 1942, he vowed to return and
did all he could to convince the joint chiefs and the politicians in Washington
that his plan was the best. A third strategy favored by Nimitz was called the Island Hopping strategy. Key islands
would be attacked until Japan and Japanese held areas of China were in range
using long range bombers from island airbases. Unlike in Europe where there was
one military commander in charge of all US forces, Nimitz and MacArthur were
not organized under a unified command. President Roosevelt needed to step in to
decide that an island hopping strategy would be tried.
The first major amphibious assault was at Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands in 1942. That proved to be very costly in men, material and
time as the Japanese put up a furious defense and stalled a plan to attack Rabaul
on the island of New Britain in New Guinea. Had Guadalcanal fallen more easily,
MacArthur’s strategy to attack through Borneo might have been the one chosen.
By the end of 1943, Nimitz was balking at sending most of his naval forces to
support MacArthur in Borneo and the Philippines as he felt that would leave the
Central Pacific including Hawaii vulnerable to a Japanese counter offensive. The
landing at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands with heavy Marine Corp losses in
November of 1943 reinforced Nimitz’s view that he could not reduce his available
forces in the Central Pacific.
MacArthur and Nimitz came to an understanding and pledged
mutual cooperation as neither were anxious to have a directive from Washington
that one would be elevated above the other.
While Stanley was at the Marshall Islands, cousin Edwin on
the destroyer USS Reid was engaged in patrol, escort and landing support duties
at Arawe and Cape Gloucester on New Britain Island in December 1943. Then it
was off to Saidor, New Guinea to protect another landing on Jan 2, 1944. This
was followed closely on February 29th by a landing at Los Negros
Island in the Admiralty Islands located just north of New Guinea. Destroyers
were the workhorse of the navy providing protection for battleships and
carriers along with an ability to use torpedoes against enemy ships and large
guns to shell island coastlines. They could move in fast and withdraw quickly
hopefully before the enemy could mobilize a counter attack.
A crewman on the Reid gave the following account of an
encounter that was not in the official ship’s log in October of 1943 off
Finschafen New Guinea. The Reid had been steaming around in it’s own smoke for
hours trying to elude circling Japanese bombers.
“The contact picked up as dawn approached was a squadron of
enemy torpedo planes. They circled awaiting first light to appear on the eastern
horizon to silhouette our ships for easy targeting.
With no hope of friendly fighter planes arriving until too
late, and knowing we would be sitting ducks against dawn’s early light, a ruse was
devised using a radio frequency known to be monitored by the enemy. One ship
(probably our ship) played the role of squadron leader of our friendly
fighters. Another voice was that of the fighter director on our ship.
The plan was to play out a dialog on the radio that would
lead the enemy to believe that friendly fighters were on the way and would
arrive at first light. In reality, there was no hope of the friendly fighters
arriving until 30 minutes after first light. But the play went on with the simulated
exchange.
As it progressed, all of us on the bridge heard the exchange
on the bridge speakers. Our friendly “squadron leader” reported take off and
made periodic position reports indicating getting closer to us as dawn
approached. Finally, with just five minutes remaining before first light, the
enemy torpedo planes turned and went home without firing a shot, evidently a
victim of their own eavesdropping. And so the “Rugged Reid” lived on.” - http://ussreid369.org/warstories.htm
Meanwhile Joe was getting trained in Lido Beach, Long Island
to be part of a small three man crew in an LCI - Landing Craft Infantry. He was
to be the “motor man” who kept the engine and the pumps running while a
coxswain drove the boat and another crewman raised and lowered the heavily
armored front door. Joe and everyone else in ACORN 29 expected to go to Europe
for D-Day. But for now it was another situation of “hurry up and wait”.
On February 25, 1944, the USS Rocky Mount sailed back to
Pearl Harbor for training and resupply for the next amphibious assault and
invasion.
