Kaiten by Michael Mair

Author:Michael Mair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Rescue

I felt sick seeing these men screaming from pain and covered with oil.

—Lieutenant Milford Romanoff, officer of the deck, USS Lackawanna

In Lackawanna’s gig, Jim Factor approached Mississinewa on his second rescue trip of the day. The oiler burned out of control. Three men escaping the ship reached the fantail through the smoke and flames; Factor watched them reach the poop deck and climb down a ladder toward the water. The fire’s intense heat threatened the rescue efforts, but doggedly he edged the small boat forward, a hundred feet from the burning ship.

Factor worked the gig into the swirling smoke and flame. Three survivors had plunged from the ladder into the oily water near flames that threatened to engulf them. Burning oil was closing in fast on the men; with no time to board the small boat, they grabbed hold of the gunwales and hung on. At full speed Factor backed the gig out of harm’s way as the oil-covered trio clung to the boat. He paused outside the edge of the flames to scan the water for more men. Certain that the three sailors were the last men still left in the water, Lackawanna rescuers took the survivors aboard the gig and headed for their ship.

Bow hook Bill Depoy gestured to coxswain Willie Potter, as he spotted Mississinewa sailors struggling in the water. Potter edged the launch closer to where Depoy was pointing, until he could make out an oil-covered head. He gave engineer Earl Ertel three bells, the signal to stop. Depoy reached over the side, grabbing men’s belts, clothing or hair to pull the slippery, oil-soaked sailors into the launch. Sick to his stomach at the sight of skin sloughing off burned and naked sailors, he redoubled his rescue effort. Smoke, fire and after explosions created a chaotic nightmare of noise and color. A hot chunk of metal bulkhead whistled through the air and embedded itself in the bottom of Lackawanna’s launch, the white-hot debris narrowly missing Potter at the helm.

Potter peered through wispy gaps in the smoke for a glimpse of the poop deck, where survivors were still abandoning ship. He saw chief machinist’s mate George Douning signal the launch with a rag, and he could tell the fire would soon engulf the sailors waiting there for help. He darted in and within minutes got them into the launch, all the while getting jolted and jarred by explosions that never stopped. Staccato shocks blasted every time the flames reached ready ammunition, lube oil drums and fuel, and the ship was ripping apart even as it sank.

The Lackawanna men collected twenty survivors and circled the area for a few minutes searching for more. Helmsman Potter glanced at two badly burned men in the boat, Clemence Carlson and Jim Kirk, and knew they stood little chance of survival. Nearly skinless and with charred muscles visible, the boys lay dying.

As the gig returned, sailors on the Lackawanna stood by, ready to help unload the survivors despite the burning oil pocking their own skin.

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