Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501230056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Fifty years ago today, Japan's ``divine wind'' - the kamikaze - whirled into the life of Ken Platt, Lawrence Webber and their shipmates on the USS Ticonderoga.
Platt, who was born and raised in Roanoke, jumped under the wing of a parked F6S fighter for shelter when the first enemy suicide plane hit the big aircraft carrier's deck near the forward elevator, starting a terrible fire on the hangar deck below.
Webber, who grew up in Bedford County and now lives near Vinton, was waiting on deck for one of two planes headed up on the elevator so he could hook it to a small tractor. He looked the kamikaze pilot in the face before the plane tore through the wood and steel deck about 75 feet away.
``It was just a Japanese face,'' he said, when asked about the pilot's expression.
Black smoke poured from the bowels of the ship, and fire hoses crisscrossed the flight deck as sailors poured tons of water onto the fire below. The wounded were laid out on the deck away from the fire.
The events that followed that first kamikaze hit aren't too clear in Platt's memory, but he remembers standing watch on deck that night. ``There was the horrible stench of burned bodies,'' he said.
Platt was working at an aircraft plant in Baltimore before he joined the Navy in 1944. He was 22.
The Navy assigned him to the crew of a new Essex-class aircraft carrier, the Ticonderoga, which was commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth in May 1944. The carrier was among the largest in the U.S. Navy.
Following a shakedown cruise to the Caribbean and a stop at Pearl Harbor, the ship joined Admiral ``Bull'' Halsey's 3rd Fleet in the South Pacific in late October 1944. The ship and crew first saw combat Nov.4 in the Philippine Sea as support for the battle to retake the Philippines.
Platt remembers Jan. 21, 1945, as a sunny day with a ``crystal clear'' sky. The Ticonderoga, operating in the straits between the Philippines and Formosa, was attacked by planes of Japan's Special Air Force, a suicide unit that purposely dived its explosive-laden planes into Allied warships.
Japan began using the kamikazes in large numbers after U.S. forces invaded the Philippines in October 1944. During the invasion of Okinawa in 1945, the Japanese used more than 6,000 such planes. They also employed gliders, boats and rafts carrying swimmers laden with high explosives in suicide attacks on ships.
The crew of the Ticonderoga had been attacked by kamikazes before but never had been hit. Tokyo Rose, the Japanese radio propagandist, had said in a broadcast that 35 kamikazes were dedicated solely to the Ticonderoga's destruction.
Webber, who was 25 at the time, said he was warned of the Jan. 21 attack by the sailor driving the tractor. He turned to find the Japanese plane, guns blasting away, headed straight for him. ``I was looking it right in the nose,'' he said.
Webber said he rolled into a ball next to the tractor as machine-gun bullets tore through the deck. A plane loaded with high explosives and firebombs hit next, landing eventually in the elevator shaft. Only one of 30 men riding up on the elevator at the time survived, he said.
Webber ran back toward the bridge of the ship with his clothes on fire, not remembering how he missed the hole in the deck caused by the exploding plane. ``My clothes fell off, burnt to a crisp,'' he said.
Before it was hit, the Ticonderoga's guns brought down three enemy planes. The first one to strike the carrier came in from the ship's port, or left, side and dived toward the flight deck while strafing the ship with its machine guns, Platt said. The Japanese pilot apparently had been trying to crash among the 60 planes parked on deck but instead hit forward.
About 30 minutes later, while the crew still was fighting fire and tending the wounded, a second kamikaze came in from the ship's starboard side, hitting the carrier's ``island'' and knocking out two 5-inch guns and the forward part of the bridge.
The ship lost 345 officers and enlisted men killed, wounded or missing in the two kamikaze strikes. Capt. Dixie Kiefer, who Platt said was one of the Navy's best-loved officers, was badly injured, as was his executive officer.
The carrier limped south to Ulithi atoll in the Caroline Islands, the 3rd Fleet's base of operations, for emergency repairs, then headed for Bremerton, Wash., by way of Pearl Harbor for major repairs.
With a large complement of new officers and men, the Ticonderoga was back in action with the 3rd Fleet by May 24. Following the Japanese surrender on Aug. 14, the carrier's planes flew reconnaissance over Japanese airfields and military bases until the surrender was signed Sept. 2. On Sept. 6, the ship moved into Tokyo Bay and anchored off Yokohama.
Platt was with the ship through the end of the war. After a period of recuperation, Webber rejoined the ship briefly but left it before it returned to the South Pacific.
by CNB