Pam rekeyed this article as it appeared in a newspaper in Salem, South Dakota, Thursday, May 28, 1942.
It is the story of her father's experience in a WWII battle off the island of Borneo while aboard the USS Marblehead cruiser.
Notes:
- There is also a book written about the USS Marblehead titled "Where Away" written in 1944.
- A movie was made about the doctor on board the USS Marblehead, Dr. Wassell. It stars Gary Cooper. Here's a link to some information about The Story of Dr. Wassell.
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Home on Furlough Veteran of Pacific Fighting Tells of Experience
Harold Keith Jacobus, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roy Jacobus, arrived home last Friday from New York city to spend a portion of his 30-day furlough from the United States Navy with his parents.
Keith was a member of the crew of the famous cruiser Marblehead, claimed by the Japanese to have been sunk in the preliminary stages of the naval struggles for the Dutch East Indies, and his telegram to his parents when the badly damaged vessel docked at New work was the first word they had received from him since before the attack on Pearl Harbor last December. Incidentally, this is his first visit home in three years.
The quiet, unassuming young sailor was interview for The Special by Mr. and Mrs. Walter J. Ryan and the following account details some of the experiences that he has gone through since December 7th. the quotation from the Navy Departments announcements were furnished by Jacobus from New York newspapers’ accounts dealing with their arrival there.
Keith is a mechanic and accompanies the pilot in a naval observation plane as observer and gunner. The Marblehead carried two such planes, termed non-combatant planes but carrying guns for defensive purposes only. The cruiser is a 7050-ton vessel of the old type, launched in 1923. It has a normal speed capacity of 30 knots and is lightly armored and protected. Its crew totals 660 men.
See plane ready for catapulting off deck of ship. Keith would have been in the rear of the plane.
When word of the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands was received the Marblehead was at Tarakan, a port in Borneo, and from the first day of the war was on alert for contact with the enemy. As the Nipponese commenced their terrific drive for the Dutch East Indies, the American cruisers and destroyers made several attempts to intercept them and turn them back, but the tremendous air superiority of the invaders prevented them from successfully accomplishing the task.
However, on January 24th they did succeed in catching the Japanese in Macassar [now Makassar] straits. The Marblehead was serving as one of the covering units for United States and Dutch submarines and aircraft and did not engage in any of the actual fighting in Macassar. The Jap ships were drawn up, apparently riding at anchor, in two parallel lines in the strait. The Marblehead and other cover ships had gone on ahead and in the darkest of imaginable nights four United States destroyers--the John D. Ford, Parrot, Pope and Paul Jones--streamed between the two lines of enemy ships and launched a torpedo attack upon them. They made a return trip over the same route and fired more torpedoes at the silent vessels, sinking at least four large transports and possibly two medium-size transports, besides damaging two more. The four destroyers did their work swiftly and well and Keith said "I guess the score was about 1500 to 4 that night."
On February 4, the Marblehead and four destroyers, the Steward, John D. Edwards, Barker and Bulmer, put out from the Dutch navy base at Surabaya to attack a concentration of Japanese ships off Balikpapan. They encountered enemy force of seven cruisers, 13 destroyers and in the face of such overwhelming odds retired to join the cruiser Houston, the Dutch light cruisers Java, DeRuyter and Tromp, and three Dutch destroyers. This force lay in wait for the Jap armada off Balikpapan where they were spotted by a Japanese plane. The ships knew, when the plain failed to answer their signals, that they were in for an attack and it came in the form of 54 Japanese bombers in waves of nine, which rained bombs on the Allied flotilla for two hours. Only two ships--the Houston and the Marblehead--were hit.
The bombers flew so high that they were almost out of range of the anti-aircraft fire, but the gunners on the Houston hit one plane. The pilot then steered his craft for a suicide dive at the Marblehead but the gunners on that ship completed its destruction, the plane plunging into the sea about 30 feet from the cruiser. The Houston was hit by a bomb but is damage was not serious, but the Marblehead was in a bad way. Two bombs made direct hits on the vessel, but the greatest damage to it was caused by a "near miss" which blew a hole in one of the water tight compartments below water large enough to drive an automobile through.
The ships were drawn up in battle order and when the hole was torn in the Marblehead, the Houston was two miles away. The crew on that ship thought for a moment that the Marblehead had been blown clear out of the water.
The official Navy report said "The Marblehead was rocked by explosion, swept by fire, and threatened with flooding."
See Wikipedia account of The Battle of Makssar Strait
Its steering gear was disabled and the vessel withdrew to the port of Tjilatjap [now Calicap], where its 15 dead and 20 wounded men were carried ashore. The ship was steered by its engines after the steering gear was disabled. At one time, water poured into the huge hole below its water line so fast that the pumping equipment was inadequate to keep out the rising flood. The crew formed a bucket brigade and bailed frenziedly for hours to keep the ship from swamping until temporary repairs could be made. On February 7th, it reached Tjilatjap, where minor repairs were made at the inadequate docks.
The Navy's report of the exploit reads "Only through the ability and determination of the ship's personnel was the ship kept afloat....Here is the story of a ship bombed to hell and brought right out of it by a crew that does not know the meaning of the word abandon."
After making temporary repairs the Marblehead steamed to a British base on Ceylon. More repairs were made there and the vessel proceeded to Capetown, South Africa, where still more work was done to repair the damage received from the bombing. Then, they steamed across the Atlantic to Pernambuco, Brazil, for another repair job and then home to New York--13,000 miles across three oceans--where they docked on May 4, three months after the battle.
Eighteen ships withstood the bombing attack, which cost the Japs three planes, and none of them [US planes] were lost. However, the Houston and the Pope were later sunk in the battle of Java.
On the way to New York from Pernambuco the crew of the Marblehead heard of their "sinking" by the Japanese three times on the air. They believe one of the reasons the claim was made for the purpose of bolstering home morale in Japan, for the Marblehead made a goodwill tour to the island nation during 1941 and many natives had seen the ship and were impressed by it.
Mr. Jacobus also said that the crew believed that the wounded men they had set ashore at Tjilatjap were among those rescued by the intrepid American doctor [Dr. Wassell] whose heroism was related in the last fireside talk by President Roosevelt.
He said that the American bombers were far superior to the Japanese and that the naval and aerial gunners in our service were far more accurate marksmen than the enemy. He is of the opinion that the battle of the Coral Sea demonstrated that we are getting equipment to the fighting zones of the Pacific and that the manner in which mail is coming on schedule across that ocean indicates that we effectively control the sea.
Mr. Jacobus, although not boastful, is certainly proud of the Navy in which he serves. He is warm in the praise of the ship's officers and of its crew who went about the preparations for the battle calmly and systematic ally and who took in stride the terrific bombing. "When you are in a spot like that," he said, "you learn what men are made of."
USS Marblehead after repairs in 1942.
He said that while people at home are wondering where the Pacific fleet was, the crew of the Marblehead knew no more about it than the folks in South Dakota. "I used to wonder what they were doing and why we didn't hear anything," he said, "and then made up my mind that the men who were running this Navy had been doing it for a long time and knew what they were about."
Asked where he thought the war would end, he replied, "Right in Tokyo--if there is any Tokyo left."
And that is a part of the sage of a youthful American sailor, who has sailed around the world, walked in the ports of many nations, observed the differences between countries and races. He named Capetown as the most modern of the foreign ports he had seen, with Manila next; Tokyo is a curious mixture of modern metropolis and thatched bamboo huts; Shanghai is the ragtag of them all.
He looks forward now to the end of the war and expect to be a landsman again after his term of enlistment is over. He has been almost everywhere and seen the strange corners of the earth and is perfectly content to spend the rest of his life in the United States. "The fellow who said 'See America First' knew what he was talking about," he said, “If you see it all you'll be too old to go anywhere else and there isn't anything to go for anyway."
Next week he will go to California to visit his brother and sisters before returning to New York and active duty. He doesn't know of course, what the future holds for him. Perhaps a return to the valiant Marblehead, more likely assignment to another of the nation's fighting ships. Whatever it is and wherever it may take him he will carry with him the good wishes of all his friends in this and the surrounding communities.
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