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00:00:00The
00:00:22vicious Pacific struggle of World War II.
00:00:25One class of fighting machine was at the spearhead of every battle.
00:00:31At the time, it was the largest warship America had ever built.
00:00:36With the ability to launch hundreds of fighter bombers against shipping and island bases,
00:00:40it tore into the heart of the enemy.
00:00:47In the bitter and often suicidal battle for the Pacific,
00:00:51it wrought terrifying destruction on the Japanese
00:00:54and brought about ultimate victory.
00:00:58The U.S. aircraft carrier.
00:01:01It's the largest ship I'd ever seen in my life.
00:01:04And it just...
00:01:05It sort of frightened me. It was so big.
00:01:09It'll beat the hell out of you.
00:01:11But if you hit it, you can hurt it bad.
00:01:15Using extraordinary colour archive film and re-enactments,
00:01:19Battle Stations takes you beneath the decks of the mightiest ship in the Pacific War,
00:01:24the aircraft carrier.
00:01:26The morning of December the 7th, 1941.
00:01:38A Japanese task force comprising of six aircraft carriers is 270 miles north of Hawaii.
00:01:45At 6 a.m. they launch their 360 aircraft.
00:01:52Two hours later, they attack the American naval base of Pearl Harbor.
00:01:57By 10 a.m. the U.S. Pacific fleet is destroyed.
00:02:15Of its eight battleships, six are either sunk or severely damaged,
00:02:19along with three cruisers and three destroyers.
00:02:22America was at war.
00:02:25Never before had so much shipping been destroyed by enemy aircraft
00:02:30that had been launched from carriers.
00:02:32These mighty ships had come of age as fearsome machines of war.
00:02:42Yet only 30 years earlier, they had been looked on as nothing more than an interesting experiment.
00:02:49On November the 14th, 1910, a 24-year-old American pilot called Eugene Ely
00:02:55became the first to successfully take off from a ship
00:02:58when he took his Curtiss biplane from the deck of a cruiser.
00:03:01Carrier Aviation had been born.
00:03:06Though the experiment had opened a few navy eyes, it did not loosen its purse strings.
00:03:11A ship built specifically to launch planes was considered ridiculous.
00:03:16Instead, the U.S. developed a floating platform for seaplanes.
00:03:20America was fast losing out to other nations in the development of naval aviation.
00:03:25Britain was quick to recognise the potential of planes equipped with ordnance operating from ships.
00:03:32By June 1913, a landing platform had been built on board one of its cruisers, HMS Hermes.
00:03:40Two years later, the Royal Navy was operating aircraft from five modified vessels.
00:03:46Following the British lead of converting ships for use as aircraft platforms,
00:03:51the U.S. Navy selected a collier to become America's first aircraft carrier.
00:03:57Named the USS Langley, she was commissioned in 1922.
00:04:01Although, ungainly, she would be the first in a large and fearsome family of naval vessels.
00:04:08But the problems of landing and taking off on a moving vessel were enormous.
00:04:13This new science was having its fair share of teething problems.
00:04:18But across the other side of the world, another country was also beginning to develop its own carriers.
00:04:29Japan had seized on the importance of naval aviation, and carrier development was a high priority.
00:04:35By the mid-1920s, its building programme was far more advanced than the U.S.
00:04:41But it was Japan's invasion of China in 1937 that sent a wake-up call to the world.
00:04:52America, conscious of the threat in the Pacific, immediately ordered the construction of a new generation of carriers,
00:04:59more powerful, with greater range and load-carrying capabilities.
00:05:04Amid growing international tension, three carriers were commissioned.
00:05:09The Yorktown, Enterprise, and Wasp.
00:05:14Though theoretically capable of launching a devastating attack,
00:05:17the modern aircraft carrier had never before been used offensively.
00:05:23But on the morning of December the 7th, 1941, everything changed.
00:05:30Pearl Harbour had conclusively proved the effectiveness of a carrier force.
00:05:36Grievously wounded, America needed to show that it could take the fight back to Japan.
00:05:42In an audacious move on April the 18th, 1942, an American carrier struck at the very heart of Japan.
00:05:51Taking off from the USS Hornet, 16 B-25s commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, bombed Tokyo.
00:06:00In reality, the raid caused little damage, and the Japanese people were able to go about their normal business.
00:06:06But in America, the psychological impact was enormous.
00:06:11A carrier had struck at the very seat of power of the Japanese emperor, a city thought to be impervious to enemy action.
00:06:18The American public was really down.
00:06:23They had nothing to shout about.
00:06:25All of a sudden, it shows up in the papers, Tokyo bombed.
00:06:30And the attitude of the American public immediately changed.
00:06:35Again, the carrier had demonstrated that even distant enemies were vulnerable to attack.
00:06:46But would there be time for America to build new carriers before Japan had swept across the whole of the Pacific?
00:06:54Despite the devastation of the American Pacific Fleet by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, three U.S. carriers had miraculously escaped.
00:07:07The Saratoga, Lexington and Enterprise were at sea when the attack took place.
00:07:13These three were now all that stood between Japan and defeat.
00:07:18Immediately, plans to supply the Pacific Fleet with 40 new carriers were reviewed and put into action.
00:07:27The new Essex-class carrier was chosen to be the foundation of America's rebuilding program.
00:07:34Intended to carry more aircraft, the Essex-class was over 800 feet long and at 27,000 tons, was more than a third heavier than any of its predecessors.
00:07:43And armor protection was greatly improved.
00:07:49These features, with the provision of a vastly improved battery, such as the main armament of eight five-inch guns,
00:07:5617 40mm Bofors guns and 60 20mm Erlikon guns, gave the ships a much enhanced survivability.
00:08:08In a Herculean effort, five shipyards in Virginia, Massachusetts, New York and Philadelphia worked around the clock to produce 24 of these colossal vessels.
00:08:23Each one bigger than a major New York skyscraper.
00:08:25It looked like a warship, but I'd say ten to twenty percent of the shipyard workers were ladies.
00:08:36And you heard of Rosie the Riveter.
00:08:39Well, it was Rosie the Welder.
00:08:43If you can picture a brand new hotel with nothing in any of the rooms, nothing.
00:08:50That was my first introduction to the ship.
00:08:52The construction of the Essex-class aircraft carriers exemplified America's awesome industrial capability.
00:09:00Tens of thousands of workers rushed to get these much-needed vessels into the front line.
00:09:06In a remarkable industrial achievement, the shipyards produced the carriers far ahead of schedule, in some cases by as much as 17 months.
00:09:14The American people also played their part.
00:09:21A Massachusetts insurance company offered a special bond drive to raise funds for a carrier.
00:09:27The drive raised enough money not only to build the ship, but to pay for its operating expenses for a year as well.
00:09:32And as these mighty ships began to emerge from the shipyards, there was now a need for sailors to man them.
00:09:47Since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I had been wanting to get into service, and I wasn't old enough.
00:09:56So finally when I became 16, my mother, I begged my mother to just let me go because I couldn't stand it anymore.
00:10:04I really wanted to get in. I really wanted to kill the Japs.
00:10:09For many of these young men, it was the first time they had ever seen an aircraft carrier.
00:10:13Oh, my lord, I thought that thing really floats. It was huge. It was a total of about 17 stories from the bottom of the keel to the very top of the topmost.
00:10:27It was a monstrous thing. I walked along the dock there in Pearl Harbor looking at it, and my sea bag was as big as I was, and I was looking at this.
00:10:37It's the largest ship I'd ever seen in my life, and it just sort of frightened me. It was so big.
00:10:41The building and crewing of these carriers was given top priority.
00:10:47Both America and Japan realized that the carrier was vital to victory in the Pacific, and rushed to get these fortresses seaborne.
00:10:57The role of aircraft carriers is to carry airplanes. The fighting weapons, so to speak.
00:11:03The dive bombers, the fighters, torpedo planes, and scout planes, and to carry them forward in the area in operations in a group of ships from one spot to another forward in the Pacific.
00:11:18In the Pacific.
00:11:21With this in mind, both camps realized that sinking the opposing carrier fleet was the only way to victory.
00:11:26In the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, US and Japanese ships engaged in a unique battle.
00:11:39It was the first time carrier aircraft had been deployed against carriers.
00:11:53During the battle, the USS Lexington was hit by three bombs and two torpedoes.
00:11:58But the next major naval engagement of the war would prove to be the turning point in the Pacific.
00:12:07The Battle of Midway.
00:12:11In an attempt to occupy the tiny but strategically important island of Midway,
00:12:16the Japanese sent a four-carrier task force to draw out the American fleet in the Pacific.
00:12:21The principal objective was the destruction of America's carriers.
00:12:28On the morning of June the 4th, 1942, Japanese carrier-based torpedo and dive bombers attacked.
00:12:39The USS Hornet launched strikes against the Japanese carriers, but its aircraft were met by overwhelming fighter opposition.
00:12:45Of the 41 torpedo planes launched by the American carrier, only six returned.
00:12:56But the battle was not lost.
00:12:58The dive bombers of USS Enterprise and Yorktown fearlessly attacked the fleet.
00:13:03In the final tally, four Japanese carriers had been destroyed.
00:13:07Midway was a decisive battle, and one that would have a far-reaching impact on the war in the Pacific.
00:13:13You can build another airplane. You can build another carrier.
00:13:18The Japanese did not do what the Americans did.
00:13:23When we had expert pilots been in combat and everything, they sent them back to the States to train more people.
00:13:30The Japanese kept them out there, and we killed them.
00:13:34That was the mistake the Japanese made.
00:13:37America, too, suffered a carrier loss. The USS Yorktown.
00:13:47Despite this loss, Midway established the supremacy of the carrier in naval warfare.
00:13:51They were hailed as the new queens of the sea.
00:13:54But to the sailors, it became all too clear that each engagement would be a battle to the death.
00:14:02As the battle for the Pacific intensified, life was about to become a day-to-day challenge for the men on board the Cities of Steel.
00:14:10Despite the success of the carrier force at Midway, the battle for the Pacific in 1942 had been costly.
00:14:21Three U.S. carriers had been sunk.
00:14:24America needed new flattops, and needed them quickly.
00:14:28By December, the first of the new Essex-class carriers was commissioned, and ready to enter the Pacific War.
00:14:37When you go out underneath that Golden Gate Bridge, because, you know, you're going, you don't know whether you're going to come back or not, this kind of thing.
00:14:46It's really an emotional thing, watching as he disappears.
00:14:51That's when you get that lonesome, melancholic feeling.
00:14:53Home to nearly 3,000 officers and crew, the aircraft carrier is actually a floating city.
00:15:02Through miles of corridors encased by armour plating, each man had to learn how to live and work in close confines.
00:15:10There was 3,000 guys on that ship.
00:15:13And the noise was, there were always revving airplanes on the hangar deck.
00:15:18Of course, up on the flight deck, it was just as bad.
00:15:26Walking around the ship, you had to learn to duck and step at the same time, going through the hatches or hit your head, hit your ankle.
00:15:34Of course, down below, it was hot.
00:15:35It was a floating city.
00:15:39You could get a haircut on there.
00:15:42You could get a Coke.
00:15:44You could get a candy bar.
00:15:47You could buy your cigarettes, incidentally, at five cents a package back then.
00:15:52We had our own hospital on board.
00:15:56It was just like a floating city.
00:15:59The bunks were four high.
00:16:02They were length enough for a six-foot tour like myself.
00:16:06Mine was the bottom unit, probably three to four inches off of the deck.
00:16:11And to get in, I'd have to lay down and roll into the deck, you know, while everybody else climbed to the top.
00:16:17Meals were cooked in shifts, each accommodating almost 500 men in one sitting.
00:16:24Well, of course, they had all kinds of names for the, you know, collision mats with hydraulic fluid.
00:16:30That, of course, was pancakes and French toast and maple syrup and that type of thing.
00:16:36And then the eggs and the milk were powdered.
00:16:38They weren't exactly the tastiest thing, but there's some other boys that were digging trenches someplace else eating food that we didn't have to eat.
00:16:48These stars was hot.
00:16:51Deep below the waterline, engineers, ratings, radar operators, cooks, fire crews and officers carried out their duties.
00:17:00In the armories where we belted the ammunition for the guns, it was just a room.
00:17:08Eventually, they put bunks in there for us so we could sleep in there.
00:17:13Down below, when you were down in the magazine and all, well, you had to be careful there because the bombs would sweat.
00:17:22And that was explosive.
00:17:23And we put the bombs on a hoist, on a rack and sent them up to the elevator and sent them topside.
00:17:32But you had to be careful what you were doing.
00:17:37Care and a certain finesse was also needed when steering the 27,000-ton Goliath.
00:17:44You got the ship in your hands.
00:17:47You steer a ship with your fingers and your toes.
00:17:49And if you can't feel the ship in your toes and your fingers, you can't steer it.
00:17:56You've become a part of this ship. Your feet and your hands are the controls.
00:18:04Working 15-hour days, crews soon learned that life aboard a carrier was not all it was cracked up to be.
00:18:10Of course, you had watches to stand, too.
00:18:14You were assigned to a watch on a hangar deck or something.
00:18:17You had watches at night.
00:18:19It ceased to be glamorous like we saw in the movies.
00:18:24It was work.
00:18:26There were times when the crews could take a much-needed break.
00:18:30But total relaxation was non-existent.
00:18:32The alarm to man battle stations could be just seconds away.
00:18:41All of a sudden, you hear that bong, bong, bong, bong going.
00:18:44The klaxon going off.
00:18:46You know that, hey, move it.
00:18:48Everything's moving.
00:18:51Every leg and every arm.
00:18:53We were all there on duty within a matter of two, two and a half minutes.
00:19:00It was just a mad rush, everybody, to get to their station.
00:19:05And you wanted to make sure you got there.
00:19:07Whether you were a firefighter or a baker, everyone had their battle station duties.
00:19:17On the flight deck, there was a constant state of frenzied activity.
00:19:21It was here that nearly 100 aircraft were prepared for take-off.
00:19:25Landing control officers organised and reorganised the constant traffic of bombers and fighters,
00:19:31ensuring that the runway remained clear for use.
00:19:33The fear of accidents was everywhere.
00:19:35The propeller planes created a situation with the blades chopping close to the flight deck,
00:19:43that is, in inches from the wood net.
00:19:46And these sailors would actually be working in front of them,
00:19:51and they would be sliding towards the props, and they would duck around this and that.
00:19:55It was dangerous work.
00:19:58At any time, you may have 45 props going at one time, and the wind situation is terrible.
00:20:08And each plane had a chalk that helped the wheels.
00:20:14And when the pilot got ready to go, the flight deck crew had to jerk those chalks out.
00:20:22And the planes were so close together that if you didn't know where you were,
00:20:27you could back into a prop really, and you had to work your way onto the fuselage,
00:20:32or round and back to the tail, or maybe in front of the plane,
00:20:35to get over to the side with that chalk.
00:20:39As light as we were back then, we were so young and light.
00:20:43Some of us weighed only 130 pounds, 135 pounds.
00:20:48If we didn't hold on to those cleats in the flight deck, we would just get blown over.
00:20:53Fire was the greatest enemy of the aircraft carrier.
00:20:59The ship was a giant floating petrol station and ammunition store.
00:21:04Deep within its hull were tanks that held thousands of gallons of aviation gas.
00:21:10There were also ammunition stores, and over a million gallons of fuel oil for the carrier.
00:21:16A crash or explosion could spell disaster.
00:21:19No one on board ignored the implications.
00:21:23It's a heavyweight boxer with a glass jaw.
00:21:28It'd beat the hell out of you.
00:21:31But if you hit it, you can hurt it bad.
00:21:35You'll see it's carrying tons and tons and tons and tons of bombs and torpedoes and everything in this ship,
00:21:43the bowels of this ship.
00:21:44We'd carry about 550,000 gallons of gasoline alone for the airplanes.
00:21:52And we'd carry over a million gallons of fuel oil.
00:21:57See, it's own destruction it's carrying within its bowels if you hit it.
00:22:02An equally tempting target was the flotilla of support vessels that provided crucial supplies to the carrier task force.
00:22:09This fast-moving fleet would follow the carriers into the treacherous waters of the Pacific.
00:22:18Here, every three or four days, they would replenish the carriers with essential armaments, fuel, food and medical assistance.
00:22:26By late 1943, the battle for the Pacific Islands intensified, and the carriers were at the spearhead of all the attacks.
00:22:39Wave after wave of aircraft were hurled at the Japanese.
00:22:42But for the carrier crews, getting the returning planes back on board was as dangerous as the enemy attacks.
00:22:55We had a large number of crashes, mostly from battle damage, and sometimes the pilot would be wounded.
00:23:02And we had one that 20 or 40 millimeter exploded almost in his cockpit, and he was blinded.
00:23:09And how he landed, Lord knows I don't.
00:23:11The plane went up sliding up the flight deck on his belly, and I had to run back towards the railing on the side of the ship.
00:23:23I was just up there watching, and he kept veering to the right, veering to the right.
00:23:30He came crashing into that, and the wing, up close, hit.
00:23:32And it pivoted it to the rear end of that plane, hit that island structure.
00:23:37And it just came apart, right behind the cockpit.
00:23:40He unstrapped his chute, walked out of it, and he looked at it, he couldn't believe it either.
00:23:45He was dumbfounded when he looked at that.
00:23:49If you had no business on the flight deck, you didn't go there.
00:23:54Because your longevity wouldn't be very long.
00:23:56When an airplane catches a fire, if you don't get it out real quick, they're gonna go off.
00:24:07When the fire happens, you get as close to it as you can.
00:24:11And there's two men on a hose.
00:24:14One lead man, and the other eight feet behind him to hold the hose.
00:24:19You always had your head singed, and your eyebrows gone, and your eyelids gone.
00:24:24For those pilots that went into the sea, and were lucky enough to be rescued,
00:24:29the carriers had a unique way to reward the rescuers.
00:24:33What we would do, if a pilot should, for example, he's gonna land his plane on the ship,
00:24:39and the tail hook wouldn't catch, and he'd go over the side.
00:24:48When he did, a destroyer would pick him up.
00:24:51And then, as soon as they could, they would come alongside the tail,
00:24:56the tail of the ship, come upside of it.
00:24:58And in a boatswain's chair, they would send a pilot over to us.
00:25:02In return, we would give them 15 gallons of ice cream.
00:25:06And they were to return our cans the next time.
00:25:09So, our pilots really didn't hardly get their feet wet.
00:25:15When they hit the water to destroy the atom, because they wanted that ice cream.
00:25:19That's what it was.
00:25:21Throughout the latter half of 1943 and into 1944,
00:25:25the carrier task forces began to claw back the Pacific Islands.
00:25:30The aggressive Rear Admiral Michener, the veteran who had commanded the USS Hornet on the Doolittle Raid,
00:25:36and at Midway, forged a new task force.
00:25:40Task Force 58, as it would now be called,
00:25:43became the most powerful and self-sufficient naval force in history.
00:25:46On the morning of June 18th, 1944, wave after wave of Japanese aircraft from their carriers and the island of Saipan,
00:25:57attacked Task Force 58.
00:26:01The Battle of the Philippine Sea had begun.
00:26:06In some of the fiercest dogfights of the war, nearly every Japanese aircraft was shot down,
00:26:10in what became commonly known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot.
00:26:16When the battle was over, Japan had lost 480 aircraft and nearly all of their carrier-trained pilots.
00:26:23More significantly, Japan had lost three aircraft carriers.
00:26:28With the loss of these carriers, the Japanese fleet was finished.
00:26:32But the bloodiest phase of the war in the Pacific had just begun.
00:26:35In desperation, Japan resorted to a weapon the U.S. was ill-equipped to fend off.
00:26:43A weapon so fearsome, it could wreak havoc among the U.S. carriers.
00:26:48Japan's divine wind.
00:26:51The Kamikaze.
00:26:52By mid-1944, the Pacific War had seen the near destruction of the Japanese Imperial Navy.
00:27:09But as the bitter fighting on the islands continued,
00:27:12a new and deadly battle between ship and plane was about to begin.
00:27:16Desperate to defend themselves against the American march towards their home islands,
00:27:22the Japanese initiated a plan for special attack, or suicide missions.
00:27:28The plan which was hoped would save Japan was called Kamikaze, or Divine Wind,
00:27:35in honour of the typhoon that had saved their country from a Mongol invasion in the 13th century.
00:27:39The Kamikazes were unique in military history.
00:27:43The Kamikazes were unique in military history.
00:27:46Adhering to the warrior code of Bushido,
00:27:49the Japanese pilots prepared themselves for the ultimate sacrifice.
00:27:53To die protecting the Chrysanthemum Empire.
00:27:56I could never understand somebody doing what the Emperor wanted you to do,
00:28:03and just sacrifice your own life.
00:28:06I didn't want to sacrifice my life, I wanted to live.
00:28:10It's hard to understand that somebody else would say,
00:28:14I'd rather be a dead hero than a live combatant.
00:28:18In October 1944, the Japanese began their Kamikaze onslaught.
00:28:25American carriers were the prized targets,
00:28:28and the Japanese pilots were instructed to aim at the flight deck and the carrier's island.
00:28:38They came at us in waves of 250 to as high as 400 in a unit.
00:28:43And the scary ones, I think, would be the ones that came out of the 25,000 feet and came straight down, you know.
00:28:53Those are hard to stop, you know.
00:28:55I just hope that they weren't aiming at you, you know.
00:28:57When they attacked, you know, all our five inches and 40 millimeters and 20 millimeters,
00:29:10they were all, they just fell to the sky, just like a pepper.
00:29:13There wasn't any sky except for the smoke.
00:29:17Shells exploding, Kamikaze is coming down through it.
00:29:20When the 20 millimeters went off, well, let me put it this way.
00:29:35You can't dig a foxhole in a steel deck.
00:29:39But I tried.
00:29:40We had one make a torpedo run on us.
00:29:46And he got through all the guns.
00:29:49And when he got right to the edge of the flight deck,
00:29:54the plane just lifted up and he still had his torpedo on.
00:29:59And you could have stood on the flight deck and touched him as he come over the flight deck.
00:30:03And as soon as he got over the flight deck, he went in a drink.
00:30:06Everything on the bridge is shaking, and the bulkheads would bounce back and forth like my arm illustrated.
00:30:19It was rather hairy.
00:30:21And then the cordite smoke had come back in the helmsman,
00:30:25and the helmsman, he's working in a cloud of smoke.
00:30:28We had four five-inch guns, that's two turrets, firing in front of us.
00:30:40And a quad of 40s in front of us, that's four.
00:30:44And quads on top and a battery of 20 millimeters.
00:30:48And if they all got fired at one time, you couldn't hear a thing.
00:30:51Now, the captain was out on the starboard wing of the bridge.
00:31:00And a raid came in, and he wanted me to turn right.
00:31:06Now, I'm not going to hear anything he says.
00:31:09He just popped in the bridge and reached in and beat me on the arm.
00:31:12Beat me on the right arm.
00:31:14I didn't run back.
00:31:16Turned the rudder full, right, and away we went.
00:31:19As the battle proceeded, he'd run back and beat me on the other arm.
00:31:25We never rehearsed this.
00:31:27One time he hit me on the shoulder like that, and he...
00:31:30I would straighten her out.
00:31:32That's the way we were communicating under that thunder of noise.
00:31:43We cursed a lot.
00:31:44Our sailors were famous, right?
00:31:45But when one would come in on us, we would...
00:31:50We would curse, and...
00:31:52And when they were...
00:31:55When we'd pass them a-flaming in the ocean,
00:31:58we would curse them as we passed them in the water.
00:32:01By early 1945, Japanese kamikaze raids were reaching a new intensity.
00:32:08During the invasion of Iwo Jima,
00:32:11Japanese suicide pilots targeted the carrier USS Franklin.
00:32:15The date was March the 17th, St. Patrick's Day.
00:32:19Don Ziegler was on the bridge of the USS Yorktown,
00:32:23and tried to warn the Franklin that the incoming planes were not friendly.
00:32:29The carrier Franklin was just right there on the horizon.
00:32:34And the plane started towards their formation.
00:32:37Now, we radioed her.
00:32:40We have bogeys acquired.
00:32:42They radioed back friendly.
00:32:46We radioed back a bogey.
00:32:49I repeat, we have acquired a target set bearing one, two, zero.
00:32:54They radioed back friendly.
00:32:55Then we radioed back visual, visual, visual.
00:33:01We're looking at it with binoculars.
00:33:04And in the next instance, up went to Franklin.
00:33:12The explosion kind of picked me up and threw me across to the wardroom tables.
00:33:18And that was the beginning of a very harrowing 12 hours or 15 hours.
00:33:29And the ships start blowing up.
00:33:31I counted 46 explosions and stopped counting because they, there was still more going.
00:33:37I went back aft, went back and outboard the ship and got into the secondary con,
00:33:53which was then enveloped from the flight deck, fires and explosions.
00:33:58They were going thousands, 2,500 feet in the air.
00:34:00She finally goes dead in the water.
00:34:08And most of the guys are just hollering, get off that son of bitches.
00:34:13What they were really wanting them to get off,
00:34:15because she's just blowing up from one end to the other.
00:34:25The Franklin had taken two massive human bombs and was mortally wounded.
00:34:30The crews desperately fought the fires in an effort to save the ship.
00:34:35But deep below her decks on level four, trapped men were battling to save their lives.
00:34:43There was no way out.
00:34:45The fire was coming up behind us.
00:34:47There was above us a hatch.
00:34:51The paint was coming off the wall.
00:34:54You couldn't touch the wall, kids.
00:34:56I found a piece of metal from a bunk or something.
00:34:58I'd start pounding on it.
00:34:59It was too hot to touch up there.
00:35:02And we just pounded on that.
00:35:04One guy arm would get tired, we'd pass it to somebody else and he'd pound.
00:35:08And we just kept that up continually.
00:35:11And in fact, it was so hot that several of the crewmen took off their T-shirts or whatever they had on,
00:35:19folded them neatly and urinated in them and reversed them to get breathing so they could get some air through their T-shirts.
00:35:29Somebody suggested that we say the 23rd song.
00:35:32And I don't think there was one of us who knew it in its continuity from one, the beginning.
00:35:45The Lord is my shepherd.
00:35:46The Lord is my shepherd.
00:35:47I shall not want.
00:35:49He restoreth my soul.
00:35:51He guided me down the path.
00:35:54Each contributed at least a thought, a sentence or a part of that song so that we didn't miss a part.
00:36:02We got it all glued together.
00:36:04Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
00:36:07Above the trapped men, firefighters heard their cries and were trying to cool the hatch down with high-pressure hoses.
00:36:19I couldn't see how I could die that young.
00:36:23And there's so many men that died were younger than I, you know.
00:36:27With time running against them, the rescue team finally managed to get to the hatch.
00:36:31After a long period of time, we heard some tapping above.
00:36:40And as we looked up, we could see that the wheel was starting to move a little bit and then more.
00:36:48And then all of a sudden, they flung the hatch open from above.
00:36:53Go!
00:36:55Go!
00:36:57We went right up through there and down forward on the hangar deck with the fire hoses on each side of us.
00:37:06And so we all got out of there.
00:37:12Incredibly, the Franklin survived, but at a huge loss.
00:37:16724 men were killed and 265 were wounded.
00:37:22But it wasn't the end.
00:37:23There was still one island left to conquer.
00:37:28It has since gone down as one of the bloodiest battles in world history.
00:37:33Okinawa.
00:37:39By April 1945, American forces were racing towards the very heartland of Japan.
00:37:44Crucial to the success of the invasion would be the capture of the strategic island of Okinawa,
00:37:54a mere 350 miles from the mainland of Japan.
00:38:01If the battle for Iwo Jima had been a hard fought and bloody engagement,
00:38:05the battle for Okinawa reached new levels of ferocity,
00:38:08earning it the nickname, the Island of Death.
00:38:14Once again at the forefront of this strike force were the Essex-class carriers of the Pacific Fleet.
00:38:20And once again, Japan's kamikazes targeted the American carriers, wave after wave of them.
00:38:27On the morning of April the 6th, radar began to pick up large formations of aircraft heading directly towards the fleet.
00:38:35My area of operation usually was in an area called Combat Information Center.
00:38:44If the enemy planes were coming in at a very low altitude,
00:38:48then they'd be within 10 miles of us before we could pick them up.
00:38:52But if they were coming in at 20,000 feet, we could get them at 150 miles out.
00:39:01On that first day, a 700-plane force, half of them kamikaze,
00:39:06struck the American fleet in successive waves.
00:39:09Okinawa was the worst part of the war so far as the kamikazes was concerned,
00:39:14because I think it was 26 in the first 32 days that we were in general quarters.
00:39:23As the weeks wore on, large numbers of kamikaze were shot down.
00:39:27But many did manage to get through, often with devastating success.
00:39:36The plane came in from the back part of the ship.
00:39:42It came in and dropped its bomb that went into number 3 elevator
00:39:46and then crashed into the flight deck just forward of the number 2 elevator, which was a midship.
00:39:58We had planes that were gassed, ready to go, loaded with torpedoes and bombs, and we were on fire.
00:40:06The hangar deck was also on fire.
00:40:10I had gotten up to the hangar deck and joined a group of six or seven guys on fire hose trying to fight the fire.
00:40:21We didn't have foam to use. It was water.
00:40:25But we did manage to contain the fire as much as possible and got it out before it got to the planes that were loaded with bombs.
00:40:38And frightening, very, very frightening.
00:40:42It was hot, oh terribly hot in there.
00:40:43You know, you either won the battle of the fire or you lost it.
00:40:51And I was fortunate enough to be a winner.
00:40:55Many of the carrier crews were not so lucky.
00:40:58I had a fire on the hangar deck and we got out of the compartment just fine and had the fire out.
00:41:05And the doctor told me, he said, all right, Howard, there's your first one.
00:41:10And there was a man laying curved around the tail wheel of an airplane.
00:41:15And he said, get him out.
00:41:17And I reached for the man being my first one, you know.
00:41:20I don't know, reluctantly I sort of backed off maybe a little bit.
00:41:23And he said, get him because he won't hurt you now.
00:41:27And when I pulled a man's ankles to pull him out of there, the meat came off in my hands.
00:41:33That was bad.
00:41:39By June the 21st, the battle for Okinawa was won, but at a terrible price.
00:41:44The U.S. Navy had suffered 5,000 wounded and almost 5,000 men had been killed.
00:41:54When we did have deaths at sea, they would take the bodies and sew them up in a canvas.
00:42:03And they'd place a 5-inch shell between their legs before they sewed the canvas up.
00:42:08Then they were laid out on the number 2 elevator or so forth that hang out over the side of the ship.
00:42:16And then at the funeral service, there was a card that we had of men in uniform.
00:42:24And they would tilt these boards up all at one time and slide the bodies into the water.
00:42:31At Okinawa, the Japanese had expended over 1,900 kamikaze aircraft.
00:42:44They sank 32 Allied ships and damaged more than 400 others.
00:42:50Amazingly, no carrier was sunk.
00:42:53But it was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific.
00:42:55The enormous cost of taking Okinawa convinced President Truman that there was only one solution to end the war.
00:43:06The use of the atomic bomb.
00:43:14One week later, Japan surrendered.
00:43:17After four long years, the bloody battle for the Pacific had taken the U.S. carriers from Pearl Harbor to the Bay of Tokyo.
00:43:30Admiral Mitchell, the man who created Task Force 58, the one always in the thick of action, delivered a fitting tribute to the flat tops.
00:43:39Japan is beaten, and carrier supremacy defeated her.
00:43:42It was the S-class carrier which took the war to the enemy and helped to gain a total conclusion of the Pacific War.
00:43:55The carriers took the war to where it was needed.
00:43:59And I think without the carriers, we would have still been fighting.
00:44:02The sea capture the war did to the Star Trek
00:44:53That's easy.
00:45:05We were losing World War II when I went into service, and I was a sailor up at Great Lakes.
00:45:13They were building the Yorktown, which was the second Yorktown, really, and they needed
00:45:20to get it ready to go to sea, so they took 1,000 of us sailors and put us on the Yorktown
00:45:27while they were building it.
00:45:28In fact, it didn't even belong in the Navy yet, and that's how I came to be aboard the
00:45:34Essex-class carrier.
00:45:35Oh, yes, certainly, because when I first went down there, I was going through the shipyard,
00:45:43and I kept asking the sailor that was in charge of it, where's my ship?
00:45:47Where's my ship?
00:45:48I don't see my ship.
00:45:50And he says, see that building down there?
00:45:53And it was a huge warehouse.
00:45:55And I says, I don't see it.
00:45:56He says, it's looking over the top of the warehouse, and that's when I was impressed
00:46:02with it.
00:46:02It's immense size.
00:46:04It was sitting on the other side of the building.
00:46:07You could see it sticking up.
00:46:08Well, I've worked on the bridge as a quartermaster.
00:46:12That's ship's control.
00:46:14Now, we were the enlisted men that controlled the ship on the bridge.
00:46:19We worked with the captains and the admirals.
00:46:21And when we say control, that's steering it, controlling its speed, riding along the weather
00:46:28and everything else, all those duties that we performed.
00:46:32Well, the noise takes precedent and eliminates everything you're doing.
00:46:40In other words, the first part of the war, we put our battle shields up.
00:46:46That was the metal that covered the portholes.
00:46:50But we found out if a plane hit the bridge, he'd go in one side and out the other, and
00:46:56you're all gone.
00:46:57So we just left the ports open so we could see what's going to hit us, rather than
00:47:02put them up.
00:47:04Consequently, we had four 5-inch guns, that's two turrets, firing in front of us, and a
00:47:10quad of .40s in front of us, that's four, and quads on top and a battery of 20 millimeters.
00:47:16And if they all got fired at one time, you couldn't hear a thing.
00:47:19You know, I was aware of your presence and that's all.
00:47:24And the 5-inch is one of the noisiest guns the Navy had.
00:47:29It's more than the 16.
00:47:32A 16-inch gun, whoops, and the 5-inch, .38s would make a bang like that, and you got them
00:47:40firing rapid fire.
00:47:42Those were rapid fire.
00:47:43You were like you're walking three inches above the deck when those guns are firing.
00:47:51Everything on the bridge is shaking.
00:47:54Telephones would jump out of the cradles.
00:47:57We had little springs on the telephones so they'd stay in the cradle, and the bulkheads
00:48:03would bounce back and forth like my arm illustrated.
00:48:05It was rather hairy.
00:48:09And the helmsman, and the cordite smoke had come back in the helmsman, and the helmsman,
00:48:15he's working in a cloud of smoke.
00:48:19It never was ghastly.
00:48:21Yeah, we had men blown up and everything.
00:48:29The first time I was in combat, remember I told you that we had 14 helmsman.
00:48:37Only one guy could steer the ship at the time.
00:48:39And I had a gunner's mate, by the name of a gunner's mate, hollered and come down, and
00:48:49he strapped me in a 20-millimeter cannon.
00:48:51I never fired one of them in my life on the starboard side.
00:48:56This Jap torpedo plane attacked from the port side.
00:48:59Now, again, on occasions in combat, you feel like a damn fool.
00:49:04I got earphones on.
00:49:05Now, fire control's telling me, watch your sector.
00:49:11Now, that means you just look straight ahead and back and forth, no matter what happens
00:49:15behind you or on the side.
00:49:18You watch your sector to be able to fire in that sector.
00:49:21Watch your sector.
00:49:23Well, what in the hell is the guns on the port side shooting at?
00:49:27I can't see because Allen's structure's in the way.
00:49:30You know, all right, that's my first detection.
00:49:32The next thing I know, that big burning torpedo plane shot over my shoulders and crashed in
00:49:38the water right in front of us.
00:49:39That was my first introduction that you could get hurt in the war.
00:49:45The 20-millimeter, I always called it a vengeance gun.
00:49:51The big five-inch, we'd open up so far out that we would get the enemy plane's attention.
00:49:57And they would be bouncing their shells around him and exploding and had him very wary.
00:50:04Then the 40 millimeters would come into play.
00:50:07And those are the babies that shot down most enemy planes.
00:50:10Now, you still haven't fired your 20-millimeter.
00:50:13And if you fire a 20, he's already there.
00:50:19He's not only in your backyard, he's over it, see.
00:50:22And the whole thing that you did with a 20, you made damn sure, even if he hits you or is
00:50:28going to drop something on you, he's not going to get away.
00:50:32Now, that was true with the Yorktown.
00:50:35It shot down 15 Jap planes and not a single one of them got away.
00:50:39No Jap attacking the ship, never got back to tell about it.
00:50:44But the 20 would just tear him up because it was almost point-blank firing.
00:50:49Almost.
00:50:51Now, that's kind of how it started.
00:50:53So, 9 in the morning, we were launching planes.
00:50:58And a George, that's a fast Japanese plane, broke into the formation on its own.
00:51:05He flew right straight towards the Enterprise, which was right next to us.
00:51:09Dropped a bomb, and the bomb bounced down the hangar deck, or flight deck, and killed
00:51:17two men and stopped.
00:51:19Didn't go off.
00:51:21And a George, he flew right off the end and took off.
00:51:24Remember I told you about CAP, Combat Air Patrol?
00:51:28Well, those four guys are already upside down, and here they come.
00:51:31And the Jap thought he got away with it, and he got splashed in a matter of minutes.
00:51:36He was in the ocean.
00:51:37All right.
00:51:39The Japs were still coming out.
00:51:41That's at 9 in the morning.
00:51:43At noontime, McCarrick, intrepid.
00:51:46She was on our starboard quarter.
00:51:50She gets hit.
00:51:52Now, she didn't have a reputation for being a real fighter.
00:51:56She put up one of the most gallant battles I've ever seen, fighting them planes off.
00:52:01She got hit, and she was burning, smoking badly.
00:52:07We radioed her and asked her, did she want us to change course?
00:52:10Now, the purpose of that is you're moving the air through the carrier so the smoke doesn't
00:52:16interfere with your fighting fires.
00:52:19And she told us to mind our own damn business.
00:52:23That's how frustrated they were.
00:52:25Okay.
00:52:26Now, that was the noontime.
00:52:28At 3 o'clock, we get attacked.
00:52:31We got hit.
00:52:32We had a Jap.
00:52:35He'd come out of the sky right directly in front of the bridge above us.
00:52:39And you have about 8 seconds to hit him.
00:52:42If you don't hit him in 8 seconds, he's got you.
00:52:45Well, we got him.
00:52:47Hit him.
00:52:48Then his bomb come off, or he let it go.
00:52:50One of the two.
00:52:51The bomb hit the bridge.
00:52:52It hit 11 feet from where I was standing.
00:52:55Didn't go off.
00:52:57It was a 650-pound bomb.
00:53:00And it scooted down through the side of the ship and went through our incinerator stack,
00:53:04went through the signal bridge, went through a 20-millimeter platform,
00:53:09ripped the legs off of a gunner, and blew up outside the ship between mounts 11 and 13.
00:53:20That's on the outside the ship.
00:53:22And blew in.
00:53:23Cut all our cables.
00:53:25The fire control, it really left us a mess.
00:53:29The ocean was even on fire.
00:53:30Gasoline was running down on the ocean and everything.
00:53:32We were in bad shape instantly.
00:53:36It blew up everything I owned.
00:53:40My compartment was gone.
00:53:42All the sailors on the ship later thought I'd been killed because my bunk was blown up.
00:53:47I was always in my bunk.
00:53:49So they thought the whole thing's gone.
00:53:52But that was what occurred to us.
00:53:57We burnt.
00:53:58We put fires out.
00:53:59We flooded.
00:54:00Now, the ship maintained speed and our position in formation.
00:54:06Now, we got an admiral who was in charge.
00:54:09This is Navy protocol.
00:54:11Created a very amusing thing.
00:54:15We're on fire.
00:54:16You couldn't see it.
00:54:16The other ships couldn't see us burning.
00:54:19And they know they'd seen us get hit.
00:54:21But a few months before that, the carrier, there was a CVL carrier.
00:54:29It was burning.
00:54:31And the cruiser Birmingham went next to it to help it.
00:54:34And it blew up.
00:54:36And it killed about 332 men on the cruiser.
00:54:39And almost sank three destroyers trying to help us.
00:54:42Keep it at my...
00:54:43It's a smaller carrier.
00:54:44Well, a flagship, and we're flying the flag.
00:54:48The admiral didn't say a word.
00:54:52A cruiser pulled out of formation and came over.
00:54:56And she's flying an admiral's flag.
00:54:57She's got an admiral.
00:54:58And since we didn't say anything, he come over and got right next to us.
00:55:02And he's looking at us.
00:55:04I'm going to hell with him.
00:55:05You know, we've got carrier stuff to do.
00:55:07And he sent us a message.
00:55:10Where is your fire?
00:55:12Well, the signalman, a kid by the name of Schrader from Cincinnati, hollered to the bridge.
00:55:19See?
00:55:20Points.
00:55:21Admiral wants to know where the fire is.
00:55:22I says, Captain, he wants to know where the fire is.
00:55:24He says, tell him.
00:55:25Tell him it's against our five-inch magazine.
00:55:28We're going to blow up.
00:55:31If we don't get the fires out.
00:55:33And he gave him the message.
00:55:35And that cruiser turned and headed the other direction.
00:55:38She's throwing water about 12 feet in the air trying to get away from us.
00:55:42Because if we blow up, there is no cruiser.
00:55:45There ain't going to be casualties.
00:55:46There ain't going to be a cruiser.
00:55:48Tuck off.
00:55:49So those are some of the things that happen with or without communications.
00:55:53But you can...
00:55:56Things just happen.
00:55:57Things just happen.
00:56:27Things just happen.
00:56:29Things just happen.
00:56:30Things just happen.
00:56:31Things just happen.
00:56:32Things just happen.
00:56:3360 miles off the coast of Japan, an American carrier force slaying at units of the Japanese
00:56:38fleet is attacked by land-based enemy dive bombers.
00:56:41Here in the Inland Sea is the prelude of an epic of United States Navy warfare.
00:56:46Enemy losses are heavy.
00:56:48No serious damage has been done to our task force.
00:56:51THE END
00:57:21Then, suddenly, the carrier USS Franklin is struck square amid ships by two bombs from a low-diving Japanese bomber.
00:57:30Fully loaded planes on deck burst into flame.
00:57:33Bombs, rockets, and gun ammunition explode, turning the ship into a raging inferno.
00:57:40Without panic, crewmen fight the fires.
00:57:44Only superhuman bravery can save the Franklin, but her men fight on.
00:57:51The toll of casualties grows as explosions continue.
00:57:59The Franklin burns through the day.
00:58:01Chaplain Father Joseph O'Callaghan, battling heroically to save lives, cares for a critically wounded sailor.
00:58:23The Franklin is still afloat.
00:58:33No ship has ever before taken such punishment and survived.
00:58:37Scorched and bomb-torn, the carrier lies dead in the water, listening sharply.
00:58:42Rescue ships, without regard to their own danger, stand by to take off the wounded.
00:58:491,100 are casualties.
00:58:51More than 800 of these killed or missing.
00:58:53But 2,000 others of the Franklin's crew miraculously escape unhurt.
00:58:58Let's go.
00:59:01Let's go.
00:59:21The battle-torn flag of the Franklin still flies, as under her own power again, she
00:59:47heads for a home port.
00:59:53Chaplain O'Callaghan celebrates religious services aboard, as the Franklin limps across
00:59:58the Pacific.
01:00:08Entering the Panama Canal in the final stretch of her incredible 12,000-mile voyage, the Franklins
01:00:14wounded receive combat decorations.
01:00:21The crew of the Franklin who brought her through safely, heroes all.
01:00:39The ship that the Japanese had announced that they had sunk is now home in New York for
01:00:55complete repairs.
01:00:57The Franklin's successful battle to survive now takes its place in naval history, and she
01:01:02will sail forth to battle once again.
01:01:09We have to keep going.
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