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 -
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