LST1090 in World War II
Contributed by Don McElroy, 1st Lieutenant and Don MacLean, Boat Coxswain
Don McElroy, 1st Lieutenant of LST 1090 , went to Midshipman's School at Notre Dame. He remembers the unpleasantness of white glove inspections coupled with hot Indiana weather, open windows, and blowing dust. It was two hours of marching around the Rockne Memorial on Saturday for each demerit. He was billeted in Morrisey Hall for four months. Sea experience was at Michigan City, Indiana on Lake Michigan in a 110' lake rescue boat.
Also, there was the Willamette, a lake steamer, and the Wolverine and Sable, two lake steamers converted to hold flight decks. If a Navy pilot could land on one of these, an escort carrier was no problem.
Next it was Camp Bradford, Virginia, to become an Ensign, then First Lieutenant's school. Here he learned fire fighting, damage control, and welding and cutting under water. The fire fighting sounded hazardous with no protective gear or breathing apparatus. A water tank was covered with oil and set ablaze. They would attack it into the wind with a 2.5" hose with a fogger nozzle. Effective, but hard business. There was also an Abandon Ship drill at Little Creek which was daunting. They would jump from a 15' platform into a tank of burning oil. Next the officers were formed into crews and trained together on LSTs in the Chesapeake Bay. Then a 106 man crew was formed and trained on these LSTs with the officers.
As LST 1090 was being completed in Ambridge, PA, the ship's company took a train to Pittsburgh, where they were billeted at Carnegie Tech. On March 22, 1945, LST 1090 started down the Ohio River under a Coast Guard crew and pilot. On the spring floods the ship made good time, but had difficulty passing under bridges. The pilot steered the ship not with the wheel, but with an electric switch in a wooden box in a wooden shelter built on top of the con. The switch controlled the twin rudders. LST 1090 had twin screws, a ton apiece, counter-rotating. It was powered by twin 12 cylinder diesel locomotive engines (12567ATL) making 1000 HP and burning 50 gal/hr or 12 gal/nm.
The ship made its first beaching, unintended, above Baton Rouge when rain water shorted out the steering switch and jammed the rudders hard left on a right-hand bend in the river. It cut a 350' swath over 50' wide through the flooded woodlands before coming to a stop. There was enough room on one side to put a boat over to carry the stern anchor upriver. The ship then impressively winched itself upstream out of its predicament.
They took on supplies at Mobile, AL and went into dry-dock for re-manufactured propellers. It was common for ships to have propeller damage after transiting the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Next it was to Panama City, FL for shake-down.
Back in the New Orleans Ship Canal the first man was lost from the crew when the Exec insisted that a risky action be taken with the spring line, capstan, and putting on bits. A broken arm resulted. Shortly after Ralph Hostetler (my father) and John Matthews came aboard as boat officers. Their small boat crews had been through the small boat course at Fort Pierce.
There were four LCVPs on board. The LCVP (Landing Ship Vehicle Personnel) is a small vessel that carries in the first waves of troops and small vehicles during an amphibious assault. It used two 250 HP Greyhound bus diesels.
Don MacLean, a boat coxswain, remembers that the boat crews were four men: Coxswain, engineer, gunner and signalman. The boat crews stayed together until Okinawa when they were assigned to harbor duty at Nahah after the big typhoon damaged most of the small boats in the harbor. After Okinawa new boat crews were formed from the rest of the ship's company. Without the need for two gunners, the signalman also manned one of the stern 30 cal. machine guns during time of need, so then a boat could be manned by three men.
At the Todd Shipyard in New Orleans LST 1090 took on semi-trailers for troop transport, and loaded four PT boats for the Russians on the main deck. On May 6 they left New Orleans for Seattle via the Panama Canal. My father and Don McElroy remember a thrilling ride on Lake Washington when these PT boats were delivered to Seattle. A PT boat at idle would go faster than an LST at cruise.
From Seattle it was on to Pearl Harbor where the ship was painted, a frequent task as the plates had not been 'pickled'. They took on an Army armored artillery company with Sherman M7 Priests (self-propelled guns). Between Saipan and Samar-Leyete they were shadowed by an I-class Japanese submarine, but were not attacked. The artillery company was off-loaded in the Philippines and elements of the South Pacific Air Force, A20 crews were transported to Okinawa.
Don McElroy remembers one soldier who boarded at Mindoro who was clearly frightened of the sea. He wore the standard-issue CO2 life vest, a big Navy kapok jacket he got, a self-made survival belt with pistol, and a securely fastened helmet. He kept a hand on the CO2 cartridge trigger. He would not go below decks. He slept in a vehicle on the main deck. Each time he saw an officer he would inquire whether everything was still OK with the ship.
The air raids were bad, but no one got killed on LST 1090. Not all the Japanese wanted to quit. There was a severe air raid on Okinawa the night after their surrender. To celebrate the victory certain of the ship's officers were flown by the pilot of an artillery unit's spotting plane to a bivouac on Leyete Gulf in the middle of nowhere where there was a Doctor who was proficient with a coconut still.
Next the ship ferried element of Kreuger's 6th Army in the Philippines to Wakayama, Japan. Here the difficulty of an amphibious assault was clear. Beaches were a volcanic soil into which wheeled vehicles immediately sank to their axles. Wheeled vehicles had to be winched ashore from first beached D8 bulldozers. Behind the beaches were rice paddies with the exits to high ground on elevated dikes. There were Fundy tides of 35 feet. It does not take much imagination to see a lot of blood.
In making a solo transit from the Philippines to Japan the ship encountered a serious typhoon in September 1945. Of course, they tried to maneuver away from it, but the ship was so slow that it was unavoidable. There were 50' seas and 130 knot winds. The sea, with its top blown off, was like a big bowl of milk. The con is 46' above the flat waterline and seas were above it.
Fortunately the ship was empty. There was 3 feet of water in the bottom deck. The pumps rated at 2500 gpm were just staying even. With a 15' following sea after the storm the ship made very good time. (USN typhoon losses, 1944-45)
Certain of the ship's officers cut themselves orders to "find the ship's mail in Nagasaki". The mail was missing, but it was unlikely to be there. It was December 1945, four months after the bombing. It was curiosity, of course, that drew them there. It took three trains and many hours to cover 60 miles. The bomb had been off target and may not have worked right, detonating lower than it was set (a barometric fuse). It hit Yarahamsu, a suburb, which it destroyed utterly, but Nagasaki itself was shielded by a hill, so only the tops of the highest buildings were gone there. With few exceptions there was nothing left of Yarahamsu that could not be held in one hand. A bridge was chopped off at the waterline. Railroad wheels sat on tracks, with everything else of the train gone. There were no warnings of radiation about this plutonium bomb. When this exploratory expedition returned to Sasebo they found a curfew, as returning Japanese troops were causing unrest, and could not return to their ship. The port's Duty Officer got the Port Director out of bed, he didn't buy their story about the mail, but only ordered them to the BOQ, with a warning about trigger-happy Marine guards.
The Exec was sent home on service points. This was good as there was plotting against his life because of unfair treatment of the crew. At Sasebo John Matthews transferred and Jim Jewett left. Leaving Sasebo there were only six officers making for 12 hour topside watches of three. They ran in a ten ship convoy at full speed. They had lots of oil, with the ballast tanks full of oil and 190,000 gallons in the ships tanks. However, the Japanese oil was so inferior that of the 250,000 gallons on board only 80,000 would burn. Their separator ran continuously and they were always on a shoestring of oil reserves. They did not stop at Pearl Harbor because there were a lot of low-point men on board who would have been re-assigned to other duties if they had gone to Pearl. They were not given any fresh stores, so it was 27 days of Spam and dehydrated cabbage.
On making San Diego they had engine repairs done (the flywheel on the right starboard engine broke for a second time). LST 1090 was made flagship of amphibious forces, Western Pacific. This honor entailed another capricious officer. This senior officer insisted that his boat, the last on the ship, be given to his operations officer when it was being held for this senior officer's use. Then a half an hour later he was storming about, "Where's my boat?".
At San Diego many of the crew were discharged. LST 1090 was ordered to Seattle to be decommissioned with a stop at Treasure Island, San Francisco. Here my father reluctantly 'found' Mac's discharge orders after Mac's wife, Jeane, intervened with a telephone call.
The Executive Officer, was unpopular on this ship and for good reason. He was from an upper-class family and let others know that they were beneath him. He had been in the Armed Guard, and was one of the few officers to have any previous military experience. He told his fellow officers that "you can get along with the enlisted men if you realize that without exception they are liars, cheats, and thieves." He managed to have everyone on restrictions when they had their first stateside liberty. He had the deck oiled with diesel to counteract the rust and then punished the crew when he nearly fell overboard making his nightly walk topside.
There was a still on board. Lots of raisins and sugar in the tropical heat made for passable hooch. It was certainly preferable to the Filipino whiskey made from gasoline and methanol.
LSTs like the 1090 were made of all hand-welded construction. Polish-American women, for the most part, built it. During the typhoon there were two to three inch ripples down the deck plates. The bow was nine feet off the centerline. The ship held together. It was struck from the Navy list in 1960 after winning five battle stars in Korea, seeing action at Inchon. It may have been sold or given to the Indonesian Navy and may still be in operation.
Seattle was the worst liberty town in 1945, at least. The sidewalks were rolled up at 9 p.m.
LST 1090 displaced 1450 tons empty, with a cargo capacity of 1600 tons and 1000 tons for fuel, ammo, water, supplies, and crew. On one run it carried 96 vehicles, many LCT skids (12"x12"x52'), a crawler crane, two fork lifts, and 50 drums of gasoline. It's maximum people load was 300 Army troops and 100+ crew members. It carried provisions for 600 men x 3 meals/day x 60 (fresh) to 90 (dry) days. It fuel tanks held 190,000 gals. It's main restriction was water, with 90,000 gal tanks and 4800 g/day from its evaporator.
There was gambling on board. Once a little seaman was cheated at cards by a big Army sergeant. The seaman got his revenge by waiting for the sergeant to shower. All the piping on an LST was inter-connected. The seaman gave the cheat a dose of diesel oil followed by a rinse of cold salt water. The sergeant did not wear a lot of clothing for the next several days.
There were two black men in the crew. As it was in those days they could only serve as steward mates. The First Lieutenant was in charge of assigning battle stations. They asked him to be put on guns crews. They were given a chance as loaders, but it didn't work so well for them. One was stunned by the noise, and the other was nearly had his head taken off by a gun behind him (he wasn't wearing an intercom to know this gun was about to fire).
There is a story of another steward's mate who did his job so well that he was assigned to run the senior officer's wine mess on shore. He was ferried from the ship to shore in a boat and would step ashore with a milk can of water and ice. He timed this action so that it was dynamic, just as the boat came onto the floating dock. One time the coxswain misjudged and reversed the boat's engines just as the steward's mate made his move. Splash, with only his sailor's cap on the surface. He came sputtering up a few seconds later, called out "What am I doing? I can't swim!" and sunk. Another sailor jumped in to rescue him.
Seamanship was not always of the highest standard. On another LST the ship was going to anchor between atolls in the Coral Sea. The charts marked with 90 fathoms, but this was read as 90 feet. There are six feet in a fathom. So the order was made to release the anchor altogether, instead of lowering it. It's a 5000 pound anchor on 1.25 inch chain in 15 fathom sections. The anchor did its free fall, accelerating. The section of chain from 90-105 fathoms is painted yellow; the last section from 105-120 fathoms is painted bright red. With rust and paint billowing from the anchor tube and a tremendous rattling growing louder by the second the crew dove for safety when the yellow section started to play out. At the end of the red section came as crash as bulkhead, 4" piping, and other hardware broke, and the anchor and its chain were gone. The captain: "Mr. Sparks, did you just lose the anchor?" Mr. Sparks: "You didn't see that, sir. It's my G-D anchor and I do with it as I please as long as I'm First Lieutenant on this ship!"
Captain Edward Doering was not especially popular with his crew, although he was more loved than the Exec. One time boat officer John Matthews was decorating the bow skid of his LCVP with the initials "C.E." for Captain Eddie. Matthews was enjoying the imagery of driving his boat ashore with Captain Eddie figuratively riding the bow skid. The Captain came upon the painter. "Mr. Matthews, just what does that 'C.E.' stand for?" Mr. Matthews: "Christian Endeavor, sir!" That young man was quick on his feet.
Not the best men were always enlisted into the Navy. One of the boat crewman was assigned to guard a gangplank while the ship was at anchor. He was discovered to have robbed a Japanese fisherman at gun point.
Shortly before Thanksgiving the ship took on a draft of seamen. They had been in the Navy only four months and had just spent 30 days at sea on a merchant ship where they were fed sandwiches and apples twice a day. The crew saw that they got a proper Thanksgiving dinner. |
