Chester Hill 1988
“HOW MUCH WATER WE GOT, JOHN?”
It was during the landing at Cape Sansapor, for which we were carrying the flag of Rear Admiral William M Fechteler, who was in command of Task Force 77, on this the last New Guinea stop on MacArthur’s road back to the Philippines. Admiral Fechteler was Deputy Commander of Amphibious Forces Seventh Fleet under Barbey and Kincaid at the time. He was to become Chief of Naval Operations after the war.
These waters were very poorly and sketchily charted, and Lt. John O’Neill was being kept quite busy almost guessing at our exact position as we worked in pretty close to the stern of the LSTs unloading on the beach. I had the conn, putting us where the Admiral wanted to go in order to better see why the LSTs were so slow getting unloaded. He was in a hurry to get out of that area, as we had no air cover. I was getting a little nervous about the possibility of running aground as we worked in closer and closer when he exclaimed, “Those *#@*! #+*^@ are having a swimming party there on the beach instead of unloading those ###*** LSTs ! Take her in closer, Hill!” I called out to the Exec, “How much water we got John?” John’s reply; “Just look over the side and you can tell better than this old chart can tell me!”
I numbly requested the good Admiral to observe our wake, which was the color of Mississippi mud from our props getting a good polishing. He quickly decided that we should withdraw a bit, heave to and have the unloading boss man report on board immediately.
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After the Sansapor landings, we were anxiously awaiting our orders for ten days or more R&R in Australia, and betting on whether we would get Sidney or Melbourne. We had six months “on the line” with Seventh Fleet with distinction, and that was the custom in those days. Disappointingly, however, our next orders were to proceed to Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where it almost seemed that admirals Halsey and Pete Mitscher were delaying the sortie of Task Force 38 (Third Fleet’s striking force) pending the arrival of DD443 inorder to start a new phase of the war. We never saw Australia.