Rudolph "Rudy" Plappert Nazi Submariner

Rudy Plappert – German Submariner – Built Dolphin Motel in Strathmere

By William Kelly
(Originally published in the Atlantic City Sun newspaper, May, 1981)

From the moment he first saw the soft white sands of Whale Beach in Strathmere, Rudolph Plappert knew he wanted to live there.

His first visit was during the lazy, expectant, early days of World War II. The beach, the salt air, the fresh fish, were all special things to a man at war.

And Plappert’s perspective was unique because his first view of Cape May’s coast was though the periscope of his submarine.

As a German U-boat officer assigned to patrol America’s east coast waterway, Plappert helped keep Allied cargo and war ships pinned into the harbors. In the early days of the war, the battle of the Atlantic was fierce, with U-Boats taking their toll and recording their victories in the amount of tonnage sunk.

But the tides of war changed, and the silent and swift U-Boats became vulnerable. Like the Africa Corps and the Luftewaffa before them, the wolfpacks became lone wolves. With the aid of radar, and the ultra secret code breakers, the hunter became the hunted, and the seawolves became hot, sweaty deathboxs.

For one last time the periscope broke the water’s surface off Sea Isle City. Plappert threw open the iron hatch and took a breath of fresh air. He climbed the bridge, and while other men scampered around the deck he scanned the horizon with binoculars.

A small fishing boat that bobbed up and down with swells drifted closer. The fishermen waved, and as they drew closer, one of them threw a bag of fresh lobsters onto the deck of the sub. Plappert waved, smiled and yelled a polite, “danka.” Although the Italian-American fishermen didn’t understand his German pledge, Plappert also promised that he would one day return.

Rudolph “Ruddy” Plappert arrived in Sea Isle City in 1958 with his wife Englebert. He purchased some beachfront property near the end of the island in Strathmere and built the Dolphin Motel on the beach. The storm of ’62 wiped them out temporarily, and they rebuilt the motel across the street from the beach where it stands today.

“Rudy,” as he became known to the townspeople, was a man about town. A very well-liked, easy going gentleman, who was involved in civic affairs, Rudy lived out his life in an unobtrusive manner.

Than a small newspaper item mentioned that a former U-Boat commander who had patrolled the Jersey coast was living in Sea Isle. Ann and Charles Manolou, who purchased the Dolphin Motel from Rudy in 1976, began to receive phone calls from inquisitive reporters, including one from the National Enquirer. They all wanted to know about Rudy.

Today (1981), Charles is getting the Dolphin ready for the summer season, planting bushes by the driveway and doing the yearly repair work. “There’s not much to go on,” he said. “Rudy died of a heart attack shortly after we purchased the place and his wife is now living in Florida.”

“He was a very tall, broad shouldered fellow. A very husky strong man, who loved sailing his catamaran off the beach. Both him and his wife were quiet people who shunned publicity, but he was well known in town, and used to stop in Braca’s Café occasionally for a drink.”

Down at Braca’s Kim Giberson is also preparing for the oncoming season, loading up his stockroom. Although his Uncle Lou Braca knew Rudy better, Kim remembered the tall man who drank at the bar and talked in a deep and distinct German accent.

“He even looked German,” Kim said, “and used to run his two doberman pincher dogs along the beach.”

The bar is different now that when Plappert haunted the place. The giant mirror is still on the wall, but it doesn’t reflect the old seedy, shot and beer joint it used to. Kim cleaned up the place, and made it a refined restaurant.

Plappert would sit at the bar with a few of his friends, including Mayor Dominic Raffa and Commissioner Bill Kehner. Raffa, who was recently reelected to office, recalls Rudy drinking vodka on the rocks, but only infrequently did he tell about his war-time escapades.

“He said he liked the pretty beaches, and decided during the war that this is where he wanted to live,” recalled Raffa.

Kim recalls that besides the view, Plappert liked the people.

“When he surfaced off shore, he’d occasionally come across some rum runners and fishermen who’d wave at him like the fighter pilots of World War I. Near the end of the war some of the fishermen even gave him lobsters as a token of friendship. I think that’s really why he came back here,” he said.

Plappert’s gone now but the things that attracted him to the small seaside village are still there – the salt air, the sandy beach, the fresh fish and the friendly people, some of whom will always remember the U-Boat officer, their one-time enemy who became their neighbor and friend.

Thomas B. McGuire, Jr.

McGUIRE, THOMAS B., Jr. (Air Mission)

Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Army Air Corp, 13th Air Force. Place and date: Over Luzon, Philippine Island, 25-26. December 1944. Entered service at: Sebring, Fla. Birth: Ridgewood, N.J. G.O. No.:24. 7 March 1946. Citation: He fought with conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity over Luzon, Philippine Island. Voluntarily, he led a squadron of 15 P-38s as top cover for heavy bombers striking Mabalacat Airdrome, where his formation was attacked by 20 aggressive Japanese fighters. In the ensuing action he repeatedly flew to the aid of embattled comrades, driving off enemy assaults while himself under attack and at times outnumbered 3 to 1, and even after his guns jammed, continuing the fight by forcing a hostile plane into his wingman’s line of fire. Before he started back to his base he had shot down 3 Zeros. The next day he again volunteered to lead escort fighters on a mission to strongly defended Clark Field. During the resultant engagement he again exposed himself to attacks so that he might rescue a crippled bomber. In rapid succession he shot down 1 aircraft, parried the attack of 4 enemy fighters, 1 of which he shot down, singlehandedly engaged 3 more Japanese, destroying 1, and then shot down still another, his 38th victory in aerial combat. On 7 January 1945, while leading a hazardous maneuver at low altitude in an attempt to save a fellow flyer from attack, crashed, and was reported missing in action. With gallant initiative, deep and unselfish concern for the safety of others, and heroic determination to destroy the enemy at all costs, Maj McGuire set an inspiring example in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service.

Francis X. McGraw

McGRAW, FRANCIS X.

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company H. 26th Infantry Division. Place and dte: Near Schevenutte, Germany, 19 November 1944. Entered service at: Camden, N.J. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. G.O. No.: 92. 25 October 1945. Citation: He manned a heavy machine gun emplaced in a foxhole near Schevenhutte, Germany, on 19 November 1944, when the enemy launched fierce counter-attack. Braving an intense hour-long preparatory barrage, he maintained his stand and poured deadly accurate fire into advancing foot troops until they faltered and came to a halt. The hostile forces brought up a machine gun in an effort to dislodge him but were frustrated when he lifted his gun to an exposed but advantageous position atop a log, courageously stood up in his foxhole and knocked out the enemy weapon. A rocket blasted his gun from position, but he retrieved it and continued firing. He silenced a second machinegun and then made repeated trips over fireswept terrain to replenish his ammunition supply. Wounded painfully in this dangerous task, he disregarded his injury and hurried back to his post where his weapon was showered with mud when another rocket barely missed him. In the midst of the battle, with enemy troops taking advantage of his predicament to press foreward, he calmly cleaned his gun, put it back into action and drove off the attackers. He continued to fire until his ammunition was expended, when, with a fierce desire to close with the enemy, he picked up a carbine, killed 1 enemy soldier, wounded another and engaged in a desperate fire-fight with a third until he was mortally wounded by a burst from a machine pistol. The extraordinary heroism and intrepidity displayed by Pvt. McGraw inspired his comrades to great efforts and was a major factor in repulsing the enemy attack.

McGraw School in East Camden New Jersey is named after McGraw.

Oscar Schmidt, Jr.

LOCAL HEROES – SOUTH JERSEY MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS –

OSCAR SCHMIDT, JR.

The last published reference to Oscar Schmidt in the newspapers is his wife’s simple obituary: SCHMIDT, of Gibbs Avenue, Somers Point, N.J., April 18, 1980. LUISE H. (nee Fisher) Schmidt, age 74 years, wife of the late Oscar Schmidt, Jr. Funeral services will be held Mon. eve. 8 PM at the Middleton-Stroble Funeral Home, 304 Shore Road,
Somers Point, N.J., Int. Arlington National Cem, Arlington, Va.

Not mentioned is the fact that she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which is reserved for veterans, because her husband was a veteran who was awarded the nation’s most distinguished award for combat valor – the Congressional Medal of Honor. There is no mention of children or relatives, and t is not known what became of Schmidt’s medal, but there is a good record of what he did to earn it.

A torn and frayed green covered copy of the Senate Committee Report from the 96th Congress, prepared by the Committee on Veterans Affairs (February 14, 1978) lists all of the Medal of Honor recipients and includes the citations and actions of those who distinguished themselves conspicuously by “gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty – while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States, while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force, or while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.”

The report once belonged to a Medal of Honor recipient – Tom Kelly of Margate, New Jersey, who gave it to Kenny Robinson, of the Atlantic City Country Club, himself a Korean War veteran and hero, who gave it to me.

Schmidt’s citation reads:

Rank and organization: Chief Gunner’s Mate, U.S. Navy. Place and date: At sea, 9 October 1918. Entered service at: Pennsylvania. Born: 25 March 1896, Philadelphia, Pa. G.O. No.: 450, 1919. Citation: For gallant conduct and extraordinary heroism while attached to the U.S.S. Chestnut Hill, the occasion of the explosion and subsequent fire on board the U.S. submarine chaser 219. Schmidt, seeing a man, whose legs were partially blown off, hanging on a line from the bow of the 219, jumped overboard, swam to the sub chaser and carried him from the bow to the stern, where a member of the 219’s crew helped him land the man on the afterdeck of the submarine. Schmidt then endeavored to pass through the flames amidships to get another man who was seriously burned. This he was unable to do, but when the injured man fell overboard and drifted to the stern of the chaser Schmidt helped him aboard.

After being discharged from the Navy, Schmidt and his wife settled in Somers Point, NJ, where they lived on Gibbs Avenue with little fanfare, and few knowing of the hero who lived and then died in the neighborhood, and is now buried with other heroes at Arlington National Cemetery.

Ed Hill - Cape May's Forgotten Hero

The USS Nevada steams down the channel flag flying and guns firing

EDWIN J. HILL - Cape May's Forgotten Hero - Part 1

There’s a small monument dedicated to Ed Hill just off the Washington Street Mall in Cape May. As a former Cape May resident who died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Hill was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during the Japanese attack against the American fleet that began World War II.

Having lived in Cape May for a number of years, I frequently noticed the small plaque, and as the 50th anniversary of the date approached, considered doing a profile of the hometown hero who gave his life in one of the most epic battles of our times.

I looked up Hill’s medal citation and read about his Pearl Harbor exploits in some history books, but no one in Cape May really knew anything about him.

A search of the files of the area newspapers failed to find a single obituary for Hill, or any news story what-so-ever. The clipping files and back issues of the Atlantic City Press, Camden Courier Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Evening Bulletin files, now at Temple University library, were all checked to no avail.

Only the Courier Post had a single index card on Hill in their archives, which noted that a news story was published on December 17, 1941, but the librarian said that their files no longer went back that far.

I called every Hill in the telephone book who lived in Cape May or near by, but none were related to or even heard of Ed Hill, who died at Pearl Harbor. No one at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post knew anything about him, and the public affairs officer at the Cape May Coast Guard base couldn’t tell me anything. Nor could anyone at the Cape May city clerk’s office, tell me who placed the monument to Hill at the Mall, so no one would forget him.

The public library of Philadelphia gave me the phone number of the Pearl Harbor Survivor’s Association (PHSA) in Orlando, Florida, but the number was no longer in service.

Then I called Donald M. Goldstein, Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Goldstein, co-authored a number of books about Pearl Harbor, including “At Dawn We Slept,” “Pearl Harbor,” “December 7, 1941” and the most recently published, “The Way It Was – Pearl Harbor – The Original Photographs,” which contains a photograph of Chief Boatswain Edwin J. Hill.

Goldstein had the number of the Vice President of the PHSA, but had misplaced it on his desk. “Where did you say you’re calling from?” he asked. “Ocean City, New Jersey. Why I used to work there at the Chatterbox restaurant and hang out at Tony Marts and Bay Shores nightclubs when I was in school,” he said.

Then Goldstein came up with the phone number of Flora Higgins, a North Jersey librarian who had the phone number of Lee Goldfarb, the VP of the PHSA. Goldstein also suggested that I talk to Joe Taussig, who lived in Washington, or Annapolis, and Donald Ross, in Washington State, both shipmates who served with Hill aboard the USS Nevada and knew him personally.

Mrs. Higgins did indeed have Goldfarb’s number, and Goldfarb had a computerized listing of all the PHSA members, including one from Ocean City, another from Sea Isle City and others from Avalon and Wildwood Crest. He also gave me the PHSA members from New Jersey who served on the Nevada, whose phone numbers I obtained from the public directory.

Goldfarb, who served on the minesweeper USS Oglala at Pearl Harbor, also suggested I call Merrill Stoffer, a PSHA Army veteran from New Jersey who is taking 53 people to Hawaii in December for the official ceremonies, and Roy Emeroy, in Hawaii, “who has more information in his computer than the Pentagon.”

If they couldn’t help me Goldfarb also gave me an 800 number at the Pentagon. I knew I was now on the right track.

Ray Emeory in Hawaii, did indeed have a lot of information in his computer. When I phoned he was outside in his yard, but he quickly switched to a telephone closer to his computer and pulled up a file on Ed Hill.

According to is files, Emeroy said Edwin J. Hill was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 4, 1894. He was married, with three children, and his wife lived in Long Beach, California.

“Seven was not his lucky number,” Emory said, and when I asked why he noted, “Well, he was 47 years old when he died a 0907 on December 7, and was given body bag number 7”

Emeroy also noted that a destroyer escort was named after him – the USS Hill – DE141, which his wife, Mrs. Catherine Hill launched at the Consolidated Steel Corporation plant in Orange, Texas on February 8, 1943. That ship has since been decommissioned.

Emeroy assured me that Captain Donald Ross, whose number he provided, could tell me more about Hill since Ross served with Hill on the Nevada, and also received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day, but lived to tell the story.

First I called Long Beach, California information and obtained the phone number of Mrs. Edwin Hill, but it was the wrong Mrs. Hill.

After two days of trying I finally got through to Captain Donald Ross in Port Orchid, Washington. Now 80 years old (in 1991) Ross’ Medal of Honor is the senior combat award in the service today. He has been decorated longer than any other man alive.

“Sure I knew Ed Hill very well,” Ross said. “We were both warrant officers on the Nevada. I still take flowers to Ed’s grave whenever I’m in Hawaii.”

Ross gave me the address of Hill’s daughter, Catherine, and her married name, Mrs. Roggeveen, who lives in Long Beach, California.

Mrs. Roggeveen was glad to talk about her father when I contacted her at her Long Beach home, and she was able to explain the Cape May connection and a better portrait of the man.

“He was a quite man, a career Navy man,” she said, “a man of the people. He was born in Philadelphia, one of eight children, five of whom owned summer homes in Cape May. They’re all deceased now, except for one, my uncle William Hill, who lives in North Miami, Florida.

“My father joined the Navy as a teenager when his mother died,” explained Mrs. Roggeveen, “and met my mother, his wife, who was also named Catherine, in Cork, Ireland, where she was from. They met at a party in Cork when his ship, the USS Pennsylvania was in port there during World War I. The Pennsylvania, and the Nevada, were both battleships. He was always a battleship man.”

“In the old Navy,” she explained, “Long Beach, California was the home of the fleet. Now it’s all over, but that’s where we lived for the two years at a time when he was at sea. When he had shore duty, we went back to Philly and Cape May, where many of our relatives lived. Until recently, the Hill family has always had a home in Cape May, particularly the Windsor Hotel.”

[Note: The Windsor Hotel, on Beach Drive at Congress Street, was one of the large old, clapboard hotels that was purchased by Rev. Carl MacIntyrie, and was destroyed by arson. A new condo called the Windsor is now there today.]

“I last went back to Cape May eight or ten years ago,” she said, “when they dedicated a street to my father.”

Mrs. Catherine Roggeveen is the oldest of three children born to Edwin and Catherine Hill. She has two brothers.

The final irony of her life however, is her husband, John E. Roggeveen. “I met him on a blind date near the end of the war,” she recalls. “It turns out that he was an officer on the Nevada. So he took me aboard one night for dinner and I got a chance to meet some of my father’s shipmates.”

Mrs. Roggeveen has possession of her father’s Medal of Honor, and has plans to lend it to the Long Beach public library for a display during the 50th anniversary observances.

“And I’m very glad,” she said, “that there’s a monument to his memory in Cape May, which he loved so much.”

Mrs. Roggeveen’s uncle, Edwin Hill’s youngest and last surviving brother, William Hill, now lives on 35th street in North Miami, Florida with his wife Rosalie. Now 92 years old, he is a little hard of hearing, but still feisty as he described to me his early family life.

According to William Hill there were eight children born to John J. and Ellen Hill. They lived on the corner of 23rd and Diamond streets in North Philadelphia. There were five boys and three girls – William, David, Francis, Edwin, John, Rose, Ellen and Mary.

When asked about Cape May, he said, “Our summer home was in Cape May. Some of us ended up living there, and if Eddie had a home it was Cape May. He loved Cape May and always came home to Cape May when he was on leave.”

“His registered mailing address was the Hotel Windsor, which my sister owned,” said Hill, “but Ed lived at our home just up the street from the hotel on Congress Street, the second house from the corner, going west. The house is still there.”

The Old Windsor Hotel however, was destroyed in a suspicious fire after the Hills sold it.

“My sister Rose Furey, who was married to Dr. Charles Furey, ran the hotel, and I helped her,” Hill explained, “and my aunt operated it before her. I first came to Cape May in 1911, the same time as Ed, when he was 14 years old.”

“Eddie was a family favorite, even aside from being a war hero,” relates William Hill. “Eddie liked to sail my cat boat. I had a 28 foot racing cat, which was kept down at George Roseland’s dock at Schellenger’s Landing. That’s at the end of Washington Street. We used to race with friends who had similar boats.”

“At that time,” Hill said, “Cape May was purely a seasonal resort. It went with the seasons, from the first of June to the first week of September. The town had a population of 2471 when we maintained our house on Congress Street.”

“Ed was the Navy’s number one Bos’n,” said Hill, pronouncing Boatswain, as they say it in the Navy. “Whenever they had a new ship to break in they’d put him on it to get it ship-shape. They named a destroyer after him, as well as Camp Hill, in Farragut, Idaho, a Naval Training Base.”

And they have a street named after him and a monument dedicated to him on the Washington Street Mall in Cape May.

“But no,” Hills says with a pause, “I don’t suppose many people in Cape May today know who Edwin J. Hill was or what he did.”

Continued Ed Hill Part II - click on older post below

Chief Bos'n Edwin Hill

ED HILL – PART II


“He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named.” Shakespeare, Henry V.


“Ed Hill was the Senior Warrant Officer and Chief Bos’n’s Mate on the USS Nevada when I came aboard on 18, November 1940,” recalls Captain Donald Ross, of Port Orchid, Washington, who survived two hours of Hell in Paradise, then lived another 50 years as testimony to those who died at Pearl Harbor.

Hill and Ross were warrant officers on the USS Nevada, a top-of-the-line battleship, then in port at Pearl Harbor, on the Island of Oahu, Hawii. Both men would find themselves at the crossroads of history, at a choice assignment in paradise, then be suddenly thrust into combat without any advance warning. And in the first hours of World War II, they would take action above and beyond the call of duty, help initiate the fist offensive action against the enemy and save their ship.

“I was a Warrant Machinist, in charge of what they called ‘junk’ – the machine shops, metal smiths, hydraulics, generators, electricity, that sort of thing,” Ross explained, “while Hill was the Senior Warrant Officer and Chief Bos’n, with many years of service. He was also the Advancement Officer and in charge of training, all through the deck divisions. And he knew more about damage control than any 1st Lieutenant.”

“Hill was also a wonderful leader,” remembers Ross, “not only for the men, but for the other officers, who respected him. He was the most outstanding man on the ship, in fact any ship I’ve ever been on.”

“On the morning of December 7, I saw him walking on deck when I first came up from below,” Ross recalls. “He had his breakfast and was getting things ship-shape for church service on the aftdeck. He had a junior officer on his first watch and whenever he had a junior ensign on duty always gave him the best bos’n mate. That would be Mister Solar, a good man who also had 18 or 19 years in the Navy.”

The junior ensign on his first watch was Joseph Taussig, Jr., son of Vice Admiral Joseph Taussign, Sr. The elder Taussig, in April 1940, had testified before Congress that if trends continued war with Japan was inevitable.

Young Taussig, then 21 years old, was fresh out of the U.S. Navy Academy at Annapolis. Today, at 71, he is the last Pearl Harbor survivor on active duty, with the title of Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy for Safety, appointed by President Reagan.

“I remember Ed Hill very well,” Taussig said from his Annapolis, Maryland home. “He was a big, bald headed man who we thought was older than God. He was very concerned about training young officers on the ship, and we all admired him. He won about every sailing award in the Navy and he loved to teach us how to sail.”

“I was an admiral’s son,” relates Taussig, “and Mr. Hill took pains to make sure that I didn’t get into any trouble. When I was on watch he would always be standing behind me looking over my shoulder.”

“I don’t know much about his personal background,” Taussig said, “except that I do known that no man makes chief warrant officer without being totally outstanding.”

Taussig remembers that, “On December 7th I was on my first deck watch. I didn’t see Mr. Hill, but I knew where he was. He was standing behind the number 3 turret. I knew because bos’n mate Adolofo Solar told me. Mr. Solar always kept me posted to where Mr. Hill was because I knew he was somewhere in the vicinity, keeping tabs on me.”

On assuming duty as watch officer of the deck that morning Taussig ordered a second boiler engine fired up. Although he didn’t know it at the time, that order, which seemed so insignificant at the time, would assume monumental importance later in the day.

One book speculates that Taussig was merely looking for something to do, while another reports that he wanted to give the hot engine a break since it had been supplying the ship with power for four days.

Today Taussig remembers differently. “I had the second boiler fired up for two reasons,” he said. “I wanted it up because I didn’t like to be a ship that couldn’t get underway. I had been in the California earthquake in 1933, which made me conscious of a threat, so I tried, at all times, to be prepared. So whenever I took over the deck, I always fired up another engine.”

“The second reason,” he said, “is that when I was at Annapolis, the mechanical drawing instructor, E. J. “Gus” Fee, predicated that I wouldn’t graduate. But I did graduate, and he was the engineering officer on the Nevada. So ordered the other engine fired up just to make him mad, and let him know I was the officer on deck. So in my 21 year old mind, that was one of the reasons – to make Gus mad.”

Taussig’s biggest problem that morning was rather trivial. “We were getting ready for morning colors, and my big problem at the time was the flag. I didn’t know what size flag to fly.”

Early that morning, 19 year old 3rd class bos’n mate Kenneth Herndon emerged into the morning light from below the freshly painted gunmetal gray hull of the Nevada. The Nevada was the last of a row of battleships. Tied up in front were five other battleships – the Arizona, Maryland, Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia. The Admiral’s flagship, the California, was set off by itself further up the channel. Together they were referred to as Battleship Row.

On the other side of Ford Island was the training and gunning practice ship Utah, while the Pennsylvania was in dry dock. Around Ford Island was the rest of the Pacific Fleet, except for the carrier task force, one day’s sail away, returning from Wake Island.

Without air support from the carriers, the Admiral didn’t want the battleships to leave the safety of the harbor. The skipper of the Nevada was ashore, as were the Captains of five of the other six battleships. The Nevada wasn’t scheduled to go anywhere, and all was quiet, except for the sounds of the ship’s orchestra, which was tuning up on deck, waiting to play the national anthem during the 8 a.m. flag raising ceremony.

“I was making arrangements to play football with 3 division, recalls Herndon, now 70 years old and living in Clayton, New Jersey. “We had this inter-division football leagues and we were tied for the championship. We were going ashore and were waiting for this launch just before morning colors when the attack started.”

“Sure I knew Mister Hill,” recalls Herndon. “He was my boss. He was chief warrant bos’n, and all the people on the deck force came under his direction. He was very strict, just and very knowledgeable. He had over 20 years in the navy at the time of the attack. Hill was a leader, its just that simple. He was respected by everybody, up and down the ranks. The admirals had just as much respect for him as I had. That’s the kind of gentleman he was. He ran a tight ship.”

Not knowing what size flag to fly, and too embarrassed to ask the veteran Mister Hill, Taussig quietly sent a man forward to see what they were going to do on the Arizona. A single bugler stood ready on most ships in the harbor, but on the larger ships, like the Nevada and Arizona, whole ship’s orchestras were assembling to perform the national anthem as the flag was being raised.

On the Nevada, bandleader Oden McMIllan and his 23 musicians waited patiently. The band’s intermittent offbeat sounds rang out briefly as they tuned up, then stopped. A bird’s squawk broke the silence, church bells chimed in the distance.

The serenity of the moment, overseen by Chief Bos’n Edwin Hill from gun turret number 3, would bely the fact, he would die in the next hour and a half, but not before taking his ship on the shortest, most memorial, historic and unscheduled sortie in the annals of the US Navy.

At 0755, military time, five minutes to eight, blue flags were hoisted, signaling the official routine would commence in five minutes. As those assembled on the aftdeck waited patiently, they were distracted by some specks that appeared in the sky to the southwest.

The swarm of plane that appeared like insects or a flock of birds to the naked eye, were first picked up on radar a half-hour earlier. They were reported by the young soldiers who thought them suspicious, but the superior officers believed them to be either an expected group of B-17 bombers or advance planes from the carrier task force at sea.

McMillan and his musicians saw the planes bearing down on the other side of Ford Island. They heard muffled explosions and saw clouds of dirt and dust rise in the distance. At first they thought it was merely target practice, or perhaps some hot shot army pilots showing off.

At precisely 0800 the blue flag came down, McMillan tapped his baton to strike up the band and the first notes of the “Star Spangled Banner” rang out across the harbor. As the first notes sounded a plane came in low over the water and dropped a single torpedo aimed at the nearby Arizona. The band continued playing as the plane zoomed in, up and over the Nevada’s fantail, spraying the deck with machine gun bursts as it pealed off. But the machine gunner managed to miss the entire band and marine guard standing at attention in two stiff rows. The flag however, half-way up the mast, was shredded with holes.

McMillan kept conducting however, and the band didn’t miss a beat. According to Walter Lord, in his book “Day of Infamy,” “It never occurred to him that once he had begun playing the National Anthem he could possibly stop. Another plane flashed by. This time McMillian unconsciously paused as the wood teak deck splintered around him, but he quickly picked up the beat again.”

“The entire band stopped and started with him,” wrote Lord, “as though they had rehearsed for weeks. Not a man broke formation until the final note died. Then everyone ran wildly for cover.”

The ship’s bugler looked at Taussig, then began to blow general quarters on his own initiative before an order was issued, but the sounds of the explosions and madness muffled the music. Taussig grabbed the horn out of the enlisted man’s mouth and pulled the alarm bell. Then he repeatedly shouted into the PA system, “All hands general quarters, air raid, this is no drill!”

As the men scampered around the ship, some of the musicians carefully placed their instruments in their cases before putting on their helmets and running to their battle stations.

According to reports, one of the first things that Edwin Hill did was to grab a machete and cut the ropes holding up awnings that covered the guns along the deck, which permitted them to return fire almost immediately. In the course of the battle the Nevada gunners were credited with downing six Japanese planes.

“I had just finished breakfast when the alarm sounded,” recalls Francis Ritter, now 78 years old and living in Wenonah, Deptford Township in Gloucester County, New Jersey.

Originally from Southeast Philadelphia, Ritter was a radioman 3rd class aboard the Nevada. “I was getting ready to go to the church service, mass, which was to be said on the aftdeck, just after morning colors. I didn’t hear the PA system, so when the alarm sounded I ran up on the bridge. I assumed it was a fire drill, but an officer nearly knocked me down. “Don’t you realized they’re Japs,” he said. I almost got shot and didn’t know it. Then went to my battle station.”

Also up the mast was a sailor in the Nevada’s crow’s nest with a .30 caliber machine gun. He was the first man to return fire and winged a torpedo bomber as it headed directly for the ship, giving the Nevada a brief reprieve. “Here and there other guns joined in,” noted Lord, “but at first there were pitifully few.”

Another plane flew in low over the harbor towards the Nevada and was hit by blazing guns, veered off smoking and crashed into the water to the cheers of the crew. But the plane wasn’t hit until after it had dropped its torpedo, which they could see as it silently swept towards the ship. It’s explosion rocked the Nevada, sheared a whole the size of a small house in its side, and forced a list to port, which was quickly corrected by counter flooding maneuvers.

Then two bombs exploded on the bridge, one severely wounding Taussig, who lost a leg. He would spend the rest of the war in the hospital but he refused to be relived of his duty as gun control officer and directed the rest of the battle from a stretcher.

“I was below deck when the attack began,” remembers 73 year old John Gornick, of Lakehurst, New Jersey. “I was a signalman 3rd class, and my battle station was on the signal bridge, but when I arrived we took a bomb that went right through the bridge and exploded in the Captain’s quarters below. Flames came up and eventually we had to leave the bridge.”

A gigantic explosion in the forward magazine of the Arizona then knocked a dozen men off the deck f the Nevada, some of whom were picked out of the water by a small motor launch delivering Lieut. Commander Lawrence E. Ruff back to his ship.

Ruff had left the Nevada at 0630 that morning with the ship’s priest, who heard confessions and said mass aboard the hospital ship. The mass was quickly concluded when the attack began and Ruff commandeered the launch to take him back to the Nevada. The little boat was strafed by a Japanese Zero as it made its way across the harbor, but Ruff was truly horrified by what he saw on the short trip.

Before the smoke cleared he could see the Oklahoma capsized, the West Virginia a tangled, burning mass of steel, the California listing to port, the Maryland and Tennessee trapped by burning vessels, the Utah overturned and the Pennsylvania helpless at dry dock, all under attack. The Arizona, completely engulfed in flames, was sinking rapidly.

In the ten minutes it took Ruff to cross the harbor, by 0810, the backbone of the Pacific fleet was destroyed, five of the Navy’s best battleships were sunk or sinking, and the rest of the fleet was in jeopardy. Of all the battleships in the harbor, only Ruff’s ship, the Nevada, remained seaworthy, with damage from one torpedo and two bombs.

“When I came down from the mast I fought fires,” recalls Ritter, “and I helped out with injured and made myself available until I took over a field radio, one of our only means of communication at the time.”

Since the torpedo that hit the Nevada had knocked out the electric elevators on the port side, Chief Bos’n Edwin Hill organized a line of sailors that passed ammunition up from below deck by hand. “I went down from the signal bridge and gave them a hand passing the ammunition. You must of heard that song, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” well that’s what we did,” said Gornick.

Kenneth Herndon, whose football game was called on account of war, first went to his battle station, a turret gun. “But we didn’t have any ammunition,” he said, “so there was no use staying there. The torpedo had taken out our power, so I went down to the magazines to get .50 caliber ammunition.”

The ammunition elevator on the other side continued functioning however because Warren Machinist Donald Ross did everything he could to keep it going. Down below, he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism. His citation reads: “When his station in the forward dynamo room of the USS Nevada became almost untenable due to smoke, steam and heat, Machinist Ross forced his men to leave that station and performed all of the duties himself until blinded and unconscious. Upon being rescued and resuscitated, he returned to his station, again and again, until directed to abandon it.”

Up above, in charge of the deck, Chief Bos’n Edwin J. Hill would also earn the Medal of Honor that day, while Ensign Taussig, directing the return fire, would earn the Navy Cross. Herndon recalls that, “Tausig put on quite a show that day. He refused to leave the guns up there on the foredeck.”

Taussig however, discounts his own heroism, saying, “I lost a leg and received the Navy Cross because my sailors took care of me. I got all the credit and they did all the work. But Hill earned his medal for personal heroism. He’s a true American hero.”

Continue to Part III - Click on Older Post below -

Invitation to the launching of USS Hill

USS Hill, Destroyer launched during World War II was named after Chief Bos'n Edwin Hill of Cape May, NJ who earned the Medal of Honor for his actions during the attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor by getting his ship underway during the attack, the first offensive action in the war. The half-hour sortie of the Nevada remains one of the most spectacular events that took place that day.

EDWIN J. HILL – PART III

“I remember Mister Hill very well,” recalls William West, now 73 years old and living in New Providence, New Jersey. “He cam e up through the ranks and was the Chief Bosn’n, which is probably as important a position as the Captain.”

“He was a fine man,” recalled West. “I was an officer, a 90 day wonder they called us, but he came up through the ranks. He was somebody you could look up to. A fine and upright professional navy man. He was good looking, straight as a ram-rod, and commanded respect from everyone who knew him. He was a brave man, what every navy man should be. Everything about him was navy, and everyone respected him, from seamen to admirals. And you called him Mister Hill, by God.”

“At 0800 when the attack began, I was in my bunk,” says West, who was then a 23 year old assigned to emergency radio #3. “I had been on watch earlier and got to bed at 2 a.m., so when the general alarm went off and I woke up I went to my station with three other seamen. Since we were below the armored deck we were still operating when the other two radio rooms were knocked out.”

West recalls, “We got underway with the help of Mister Hill, who cast off the lines.”

With Captain Scanland and his executive officers ashore, Lieut. Commander Francis Thomas, the damage control officer was the senior officer on board. He was below deck and went to Central Station when the attack began, but after Lieut. Commander Ruff came aboard, he left a yeoman in charge there and climbed the 80 foot ladder tube to confer with Ruff in the conning tower.

As the swarm of planes veered off to the north, leaving smoke, flames, sunken and sinking ships, dead and wounded men in their wake, the officers took stock of the situation. Of the five torpedo bombers shot down in the first wave of the attack, the Nevada’s gunner had recorded two of them. All was quiet for another 15 minutes as some sailors attended to their wounded shipmates while others fought fires, loaded their weapons and began to receive orders from officers who were beginning to assume command.

As they surveyed the situation, Lieut. Commanders Thomas and ruff suddenly found themselves in a peculiar situation. Under normal conditions a battleship needs a Captain, a navigator, harbor pilot, a full compliment of officers and 2,000 crewmen, four tug boats and two and half hours to get its engines fired up hot enough to get underway.

The Nevada, at the moment, met none of those requirements, except for the hot boilers, which Ensign Taussig had been thoughtful enough to order fired up when he assumed watch duty that morning. And yet the big battleship was capable of getting underway because Mister Hill had loosed the lines and freed the hip form the mooring quays during the last few minutes of the first attack.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, “For distinguished conduct in the line of his profession, extraordinary courage and disregard of his own safety during the attack on the fleet in Pearl Harbor, by the Japanese forces on 7 December, 1941. During the height of the strafing and bombing, Chief Boastswain Hill led his men of the line-handling details of the USS Nevada to the quays, cast off the lines and swam back to his ship.’

As Lord put it in his book, “Chief Boatswain Edwin Joseph Hill had climbed down to the mooring quay, cut loose an ammunition lighter along side, and cast off…Hill had to swim to get back on board, but after 29 years in the Navy he wasn’t going to miss this trip.”

Swimming through the burning oil from the sinking Arizona nearby, Hill climbed aboard the Nevada as both Thomas and Ruff agreed that the Nevada was a sitting duck where she lay, and a 0830 Thomas recorded in the ship’s log: “Urgently necessary to get underway to avoid destruction of the ship.”

So they ordered their ship into action, and the skelton crew prepared to get underway.

In Washington D.C., 27,000 fans sat in Griffith Stadiu, John F. Kennedy among them, watching the Washington Redskins take a 20-14 lead over the Philadelphia Eagles. During the game, Associated Press reporter Pat O’Brien received a strange message from his office to keep the game story short since it was unimportant. O’Brien wired back quickly, “what do you mean the Redskins’ last game of the season is unimportant?”

The reply came back: “JAPS JUST KICKED OFF. WAR NOW.”

But the fans and players weren’t told because the typically Washington stadium policy forbid the broadcast of non-sports news over the PA system. Fans in the stands eventually began to realize something was up however when various military brass and prominent politicians were continually paged and told to call their offices. So the word spread and before the game was over people realized that the biggest battle of the day was being fought at Pearl Harbor.

ED HILL – PART IV – The Second Wave.

As suddenly as the attack ended, another began. At 0830, just as the Nevada was getting underway, a second wave of fighter bombers appeared on the horizon in close formation, bearing down on the fleet. Among the planes in the second wave were 50 Aichii Type 99 bombers from the Japanese carrier Kaga, that were directed by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, to their specific target – the Nevada.

Coming in over the water in single file formation, Fuchida let up a little on his throttle to allow a specially trained bomber to take the lead. When the bombardier dropped his bombs, the entire squadron would follow suit.

As they bore down on the Nevada however, cloud cover, or possibly smoke from the burning ships obscured his sights, so they flew past and came around for another run. ON the second pass, smoke again covered the lucky Nevada, so the flight of bombers hit their secondary target, the Maryland instead.

Kenneth Herndon remembers, “Chief Quartermaster Sedburry had assumed control of the bridge, and was at the helm, and between him and the duty officer Thomas, and Bos’n Hill, who took care of the lines, anchor and gangways, we got underway.”

Ruff, acting as navigator in the conning tower, established two landmarks on Ford Island to help him maneuver the Nevada into the open channel. The Nevada’s log notes that they were officially underway at 0840.

It was something like making a K-turn out of a tight parking spot.

Lord wrote: “In the wheelhouse Sedburry backed her until she nudged a dredging pipeline strung out from Ford Island. Then ahead on the starboard engines, astern to port, until the bow swung clear of the burning Arizona. Now ahead on both engines, with just enough right rudder to swing clear of stern too. She passed so close to the Arizona that Commander Thomas felt he could light a cigarette from the blazing wreck.”

As they passed the Arizona, Ritter and Gornick, in the ammunition line, had to hold the explosives they were clutching close to their bodies, their backs to the fires so they wouldn’t explode.

West, in the Nevada’s radio room, couldn’t reach anyone on the Arizona, which was sinking quickly. One Arizona radioman, Glenn Lane, had been in the water since the forward magazine explosion had knocked him into the water at 0810. He knew when exactly because that’s when his watch stopped. He was trying to swim around the burning ship through oil slicked water when he saw the Nevada bearing down on him.

“Suddenly he saw it right before his eyes,” wrote Lord. “The Nevada swinging out…and getting underway…moving down the harbor. It seemed utterly incredible. A battleship needs two and half hours to light up its boilers, four tugs, a Captain to handle the whole intricate business. Everybody knew that, yet here was the Nevada,…pulling away without tugs, no skipper at all. How cold she do it?”

Lane swam over to meet her. Some one tossed him a line and he was pulled on board, along with two other Arizona seamen. Hill assigned them to a five inch gun on the starboard side.

Seeing the Nevada underway, steaming down the channel, her guns blazing, had an astounding effect on the rest of the fleet. On the USS Tern, baker 1st class Emil Johnson saw the Nevada and thought, “Well, there’s one that’s going to get away.”

On a warehouse roof, storekeeper 3rd class Jack Rogo had a box seat view of the battle and later recalled, “The panoramic view of Pearl Harbor was breathtaking. To my right was the USS Shaw, all twisted in her dry dock. To my right on Ford’s Island lay the wreckage of our seaplane hangers with their windows all blown out, and our seaplanes a tangled wreck. To my left was Battleship Row. I can’t remember the names or positions of the ships now, but they were all damaged, listing, sunk and some turned bottom up. Behind me, I could see the bottom of the USS Utah rising up from the water, …and the damaged fantail of the USS Curtis…But ahead of me was the USS Nevada, listing…steaming out to sea, although it never made it.”

Wrote Lord in his history, “So she was on her way, and the effect was electric….Where ever men stood, their hearts beat faster. To most she was the finest thing they saw that day. Against the backdrop of thick black smoke, Seaman Thomas Maimin caught a glimpse of the flag on her fantail. It was only for a few seconds, but long enough to give him an old fashioned thrill. He had recalled that “The Star Spangled Banner” was written under similar conditions and he felt the glow of the same experience. He understood the words of Francis Scott Key.”

Donald M. Goldstein, the University of Pittsburgh professor and co-editor of “The Way It Was – Pearl Harbor – The Original Photographs” (Brasseys, Macmillan, 1991), wrote “The single event during the attack that most attracted photographers was Nevada’s gallant effort to sortie from Pearl Harbor. The sight of the ship emerging from the shambles of Battleship row and proudly standing down the channel stirred the hearts of thousands. Nevada and her brave crew provided a much needed psychological lift for the Americans.”

Goldstein’s book includes a photo of Chief Boatswain Hill and Lieut. Commander Thomas. The caption for a photo of the Nevada reads; ‘Nevada proudly stands down the channel during her famous sortie. Just moments later she came under attack by 21 Aichi Type 99 carrier bombers from the Kaga.”

The whole harbor watched as the Nevada took center stage. Five planes dived towards the USS Helena but saw the Nevada steam out of the smoke and suddenly swerved in mid-attack to converge on the much coveted battleship instead. “As the Nevada steamed on,” wrote Lord, “all the Japanese planes at Pearl Harbor seemed to converge on her.”

“Moving slowly down the channel,” wrote Gordon W. Prange, Pearl Harbor’s most prolific historian, “was a potential victim so satisfying that seaplane tenders and even light cruisers faded into insignificance – the Nevada, doggedly plunging towards escape. The opportunity not only to bag a battleship but to cork the channel made the Nevada the target of a lifetime.”

When Japanese flight commander Fuchida saw the Nevada emerge from he smoke and haze of Battleship Row he was quoted as saying, “Ahh, good!...Now just sink that ship right there!”

Lieut. Commander Ruff later said, “The Japanese bombers swarmed down on us like bees. Obviously they were trying to sink us in the channel.” But the second wave of planes were fighter bombers and not torpedo planes, and the bombs were not as precise as the torpedoes, so those that missed the ship by only a few feet exploded harmlessly in the harbor, spraying the Nevada with water instead of flames.

One ensign estimated that ten or fifteen bombs missed the Nevada before one eventually penetrated the deck and exploded near the ship’s galley, and it took a few passes before a dive bomber found the range on the only moving target it the harbor.

[Note: One other ship did get underway during the attack]

“Soon she was wreathed in smoke from her own guns, from bomb hits, from fires that raged amidship and forward,” wrote Lord. “Sometimes she disappeared from view, when near misses threw huge columns of water high in the air. As Ensign Belano watched from the bridge of the West Virginia, he saw a tremendous explosion erupt somewhere within her, blowing flames and debris far above the masts. The whole ship seemed to rise and shake violently in the water….Another hit on the starboard side slaughtered the crew of one gun, mowed down most of the group forward. The survivors doubled up as best they could, thee men doing the work of seven.”

“The bombs jolted all hell out of the ship,” Ruff later recalled. “My legs were literally black and blue from being knocked around by the explosions…I could see the Japanese bombs, big black things, falling and exploding all around us.”

The Nevada continued to cruise down the channel, past the Tennesse, trapped against Ford Island by the burning West Virginia, its inch thick layers of pain fueling the fires. Once past the Maryland and the overturned Oklahoma, its hull bobbing in the water like the shell of a turtle, the Nevada came up on the California, Admiral William S. Pye’s flagship.

Although most everyone in Pearl Harbor were glad to see the Nevada underway, even apparently the Japanese circling above, neither Admiral Pye nor Captain Scanland wanted the Nevada to leave the harbor. Scanland didn’t want his ship to go to sea without him and Pye was afraid the Nevada would be sunk in the channel.

Pye later reported, “…Having been informed that there were submarines in the channel, and being aware that if she (the Nevada) were torpedoed that might block the channel, I sent her a signal not to go out.”

Although his own flagship was listing and about to go down, one of Pye’s last orders, as he told his own men to abandon ship, was for the Nevada to stay in the harbor. Thomas and Ruff, on the bridge, saw the signal, and navigational problems called for their immediate attention.

“The Nevada was well beyond Battleship Row and pretty far down 1010 Dock when she encountered another obstacle,” wrote Lord. “Half the channel was blocked by a long pipeline that ran out from Ford Island to the Turbine, laying squarely in midstream. Somehow, Quartermaster Sedburry snaked between the dredge and the shore. It was a fine piece of navigation.” Like threading a needle.

In his office on shore Admiral Patrick Bellinger was on the telephone to General Frederick Martin when he saw the Nevada passing opposite his administration office window. Planes were swarming all over it as Bellinger said, “Hold on a minute, I think there’s going to be a hell of an explosion.”

“The Japanese obviously hoped to sink the Nevada in the entrance channel and bottle up the whole fleet,” Lord concluded, “and by the time she was opposite the floating drydock, it began to look as they might succeed. More signal flags fluttered on top of the Naval District water tower – “Stay Clear of Chanel.” Still lying on a stretcher near the starboard director, Ensign Taussign was indignant. He was sure they could get out. In fact, he thought the ship was all right. She just looked in bad shape, only because someone down below was counter-flooding the starboard bow instead of the stern.”

“Sitting by his five-inch casement gun, Marine Sgt. Inks had a different idea,” reported Lord. “He had been in the Corps forever and knew trouble when he saw it. He was gloomingly muttering that the ship would never get out.”

“Now Ruff faced a dilemma,” wrote Prager. “He cold not disobey orders and take the Nevada out, but equally he cold not leave her in the channel to block traffic.” After consulting together, the officers in charge – Ruff, Thomas, Sedberry and Hill formed a consensus, deciding to take the ship as near as possible to Hospital Point and beach her on the east side of the channel.

Hill told Ruff that if radio communications were lost, to wave his hat as a signal to drop anchor.

The Japanese continued their ferocious attack as hill stood exposed on the foredeck preparing to drop anchor.

According to Lord, “Chief Boatswain Hill, who had cast off a long 30 minutes before, now went forward to drop anchor. Another wave of planes dived at the Nevada in one final, all out fling. Three bombs landed near the bow. Hill vanished in the blast. The last time Thomas saw him he was still working on the anchor gear.”

Taussig said hat Hill’s assistant, Mister Solar, was killed in the same blast.

A few minutes later, at 0910, Thomas cut the engines and nosed the Nevada into the soft mud at Hospital Point, near a sugarcane field. The wind and current caught her stern and swung her completely around. Ruff waved his had and the anchor dropped into the harbor. The battleship, as recorded in the log, “was grounded between the floating dock and channel buoy #24, starboard side to the beach on an even keel.”

Japanese flight commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who had come in with the first wave, and signaled “Tora, Tora, Tora,” to announce that the attack was a complete surprise, stayed throughout the entire battle. He acted as an observer after his own bombs and ammunition were exhausted, and directed the second wave of bombers towards the Nevada. He was also the last plane to leave Pearl Harbor.

Because the second wave of bombers focused on the Nevada, many of them did not hit their primary targets – the fuel oil tanks, dry docks and shipyard, Fuchida unsuccessfully argued for a third attack and if they had done so, the US Pacific fleet would have had to retreat to California for repairs and routine service.

As Fuchida’s plane headed off, Lieut. Commander Ruff ordered damage control parties stepped up, left the conning tower and made his way to the quarterdeck where he greeted Captain Scanland, who came aboard at 0915 and briefed him.

The sortie had lasted 30 minutes, 3 officers and 47 men, including Mister Hill and Mister Solar were killed in action, and 5 officers and 104 men were wounded, including Mr. Ross and Ensign Taussig.

The fires on the Nevada would burn for days but the ship was saved. The Arizona, on the other hand, lost more than half of its contingent of 2,000 men.

“After we beached, we expected a land attack, but that never came,” recalls John Gornick. “All in all, everything turned out pretty good for us. We got away.”

Continued Part V - Click Older Post below -

Nevada Point, Pearl Harbor Hawaii

PART V - STANDING A TIPTOE - December 7, 1941

John Gornick was transferred to a large cruiser, the USS North Hampton, which was sunk at Guadacanal. “I prayed a lot,” said Gornick, who had no plans to celebrate his survival at Pearl Harbor 50th anniversary celebrations. “I’ll watch it on TV,” he said.

Francis Ritter went on to serve on two carriers, both of which were sunk from under him, the Lexington at the battle of Coral Sea and the Hornet at Santa Cruz, off Guadacanal. The former radioman became an amateur Ham radio operatior who occasionally talks with other Navy vets, including some former Nevada shipmates, via the Ham radio. “I had a buddy on the Arizona, radioman Wes Bishop, who is still down there buried with his ship,” said Ritter, who is still bitter about the battle. “We got campaign medals, but Pearl Harbor was a debacle that we shouldn’t be honored for. We were caught with our pants down even though radar picked them up coming in. But hat was just thrown to the wayside. We should have been warned.”

Ritter even has a letter, postmarked December 5, 1941 from Pearl Harbor, which he sent to his girlfriend, now his wife, telling her, “If the Japs are going to hit, they’re going to hit us now.”

William West resents the Japanese, but not for Pearl Harbor. “I don’t have any animosity for Pearl Harbor,” he says, ‘it’s time to forgive and forget. But I do hold it against them for not opening their markets to us like we opened ours to them.” West did not go to Hawaii, but did attend a local ceremony.

Kenneth Herndon stayed with the Nevada. He saw it overhauled at a shipyard near Seattle, Washington, and took her back into action, shelling the beaches at Normandy during the D-Day invasion of France in 1944. “Then we went back to the Pacific,” says Herndon, who has a book about the ship, “The Epic Story of the Ship that Wouldn’t Sink – the Battleship Nevada” (Valley Press, Fallon, Nevada), by Brig. General David C. Henley.

Since the Nevada was used as atomic bomb test ship, it couldn’t be used as scrap because of radioactivity. “The Japs couldn’t sink her, and the atom bomb didn’t sink her, and the men assigned to scuttle her in the Pacific had a hard time of it too,” says Herndon.

Retired after 20 years in the Navy, Herndon received his special Pearl Harbor campaign medal with a number of other veterans during special ceremonies at the half-time of the 1991 Army-Navy football game.

Captain Donald Ross and Joseph Taussig were special guests of honor and gave speeches at the official ceremonies at Pearl Harbor during the first week of December. There was some controversy however, over whether the Japanese should have been invited to participate.

It really didn’t matter, according to one veteran, who noted, “They weren’t invited the first time and showed up anyway.”

Besides, all of the major hotels on the island of Oahu, where the ceremonies were held, were owned by Japanese. What they couldn’t destroy with bombs a half century ago, they eventually bought with Yen.

According to Captain Ross, Chief Bos’n Edwin Hill’s body was recovered on the port side of the ship at Hospital Point by a 2nd class pharmacist mate. “When I picked up his body,” he later related to Ross, “there wasn’t a bone that wasn’t broken.”

Hill was buried nearby at Punchbowl cemetery. Captain Ross places flowers at the grave whenever he is in Hawaii, and Hill’s daughter, Mrs. Catherine Roggeveen, visited the grave and said, “At the end of the war my mother was given the choice of having my father’s grave moved to Washington D.C. or leaving it in Hawaii. Although she had never been there she heard it was beautiful and decided to leave him there. The Punchbowl cemetery is an inactive, shallow volcano, and is very beautiful, so I think she made the right choice.”

Hospital Point, where the Nevada was run aground at the end of its infamous sortie, and where Edwin Hill met his death, is now a national historic landmark known as Nevada Point.

On December 7, 1991 in Cape May, N.J., where Edwin Hill learned to sail and considered his home away from the sea, the local veterans held a small ceremony at the monument dedicated to him on the Washington Street Mall.

But as Hill’s old shipmate William West said, “I’m afraid that everyone is going to forget all about us on December 8th.”


MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION

HILL, EDWIN JOSEPH

Rank and organization; Chief Boatswain, U.S. Navy. Born: 4 October, 1894, Philadelphia, Pa. Accredited to: Pennsylvania. Citation: For distinguished conduct on the line of his profession, extraordinary courage, and disregard of his own safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. During the height of the strafing and bombing, Chief Boatswain Hill led his men of the line-handling details of the U.S.S. Nevada to the quays, cast off the lines and swam back to his ship. Later, while on the forecastle, attempting to let go the anchors, he was blown overboard and killed by the explosion of several bombs.

USS Nevada (BB-36), Acton Report 7 Dec. 1941
File//C/WINDOWS/Desktop/bb36-Pearl.html

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Pearl Harbor Survivor Predicted Attack

Pearl Harbor veteran Francis Ritter holds a letter, postmarked December 5, 1941 from Pearl Harbor, which he sent to his girlfriend, now his wife, telling her, “If the Japs are going to hit, they’re going to hit us now.”

“I had just finished breakfast when the alarm sounded,” recalls Francis Ritter, now 78 years old and living in Wenonah, Deptford Township in Gloucester County, New Jersey.

Originally from Southeast Philadelphia, Ritter was a radioman 3rd class aboard the Nevada. “I was getting ready to go to the church service, mass, which was to be said on the aftdeck, just after morning colors. I didn’t hear the PA system, so when the alarm sounded I ran up on the bridge. I assumed it was a fire drill, but an officer nearly knocked me down. “Don’t you realized they’re Japs,” he said. I almost got shot and didn’t know it. Then went to my battle station.”

Also up the mast was a sailor in the Nevada’s crow’s nest with a .30 caliber machine gun. He was the first man to return fire and winged a torpedo bomber as it headed directly for the ship, giving the Nevada a brief reprieve.

When I came down from the mast I fought fires,” recalls Ritter, “and I helped out with injured and made myself available until I took over a field radio, one of our only means of communication at the time.”

Francis Ritter went on to serve on two carriers, both of which were sunk from under him, the Lexington at the battle of Coral Sea and the Hornet at Santa Cruz, off Guadacanal. The former radioman became an amateur Ham radio operatior who occasionally talks with other Navy vets, including some former Nevada shipmates, via the Ham radio. “I had a buddy on the Arizona, radioman Wes Bishop, who is still down there buried with his ship,” said Ritter, who is still bitter about the battle. “We got campaign medals, but Pearl Harbor was a debacle that we shouldn’t be honored for. We were caught with our pants down even though radar picked them up coming in. But that was just thrown to the wayside. We should have been warned.”

Tom Kelly's Medal of Honor