The Battle to Save the Houston by John Grider Miller

Author:John Grider Miller [Grider Miller, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781934170380
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

A close-up of the shoring on the forward side of the hangar bulkhead at frame 136 shows a cylindrical fueling boom being used as a vertical support for the overhead and a side cleaner’s stage running horizontally across the bulkhead.

Electrician’s Mate Alex Macaw donned a life jacket and joined the first group of men ordered over the side. As he stepped over the lifelines he expected a fall of at least twenty feet into the water, but because of the lack of freeboard on the starboard side, he entered the water without a splash. Coffee beans floated all around him. The blast had opened a stores compartment. The beans made Macaw imagine that hundreds of frightened rabbits were floating in the area. A deep drowziness over-took him—it had been a long, traumatic day, beginning with the early-morning fire and explosion in the after emergency steering space and his subsequent rescue from that smoke-filled compartment. Now, with the combination of fatigue, warm water, and sudden relief from tension, he dozed off as he floated away from the Houston, held upright by his life jacket.

Eventually Macaw was awakened by rifle fire. Bullets were hitting the water around him. He thought he had come face to face with a Japanese destroyer, then recognized the approaching ship as a U.S. Navy destroyer. My God, they must have decided we are Japs! he thought. When Macaw and the rest of the first increment were recovered by the Ingersoll, the riflemen on board the destroyer said they had seen sharks and were trying to frighten them away. Macaw had not considered that possibility while he was in the water, and was just as glad that he hadn’t. The thought of sharks might have spoiled his nap.2

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