RECOLLECTION

James G. Sackett 1989

“Memories of the Swanson”

Shortly after we arrived in the Admiralty Islands and off Los Negros Island we received more than a dozen wounded Army troopers aboard. A day or so afterwards one morning about an hour after we finished bombarding the Island, I was near the wounded troopers and talked briefly with one man who had been wounded in the neck. He died shortly afterwards and that is something that has stayed with me.

Later and somewhere off the coast north of New Guinea a 600 pound depth charge came loose and rolled out of the depth charge rack on the stern. This happened during the night or early morning hours and the explosion sure brought every body out of their bunks and coming up out of the hatches helter! Skelter! I don’t remember whether we were enroute to an invasion or retiring to a rear area from an invasion.

After the successful invasion of Hollandia, we invaded Biak and were supporting our troops ashore with close in gunfire support. Later while lying to off the coast of Biak, some twin engine Japanese Bettys came in and we commenced firing on them. I don’t believe we hit any of them but at least we drove them away.

During the invasion of Noemfoor while lying to close inshore off the west coast of Noemfoor I had a long glass and was watching the dropping of paratroopers by low flying planes. I saw quite a few of the paratraoopers swinging from their chutes in trees. Later I was told that quite a number of the paratroopers suffered broken arms and legs when they fell to the landing strips because their plane came in too low. The ones in the trees were lucky.

In late August and early September 1944 I remember the Swanson being part of Task Group 38.4 and sailing northward to bombard Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima. The carrier planes made strikes and the covering group bombarded the islands with not a dime’s worth of return fire.

While we were on advanced radar picket guard off Saipan our B-99’s had just conducted their first bombing run of Toyko and upon their return one of the planes ran out of gas and set their controls on automatic and bailed out . We rescued twelve men from 2 rafts and searched for the 13^th man without success.

While anchored in Saipan Harbor some of the Japanese planes made a raid on Saipan . The ships at anchor commenced making smoke to hide the ships in the harbor. It was real dense smoke screen. AS the planes retired they passed directly over the Swanson very low, almost at mast height. I was on the bridge and felt I could almost reach up and touch the planes, that how low they were.

In early January 1945, we were underway enroute to Tinian Island to broadcast a propaganda broadcast using a Japanese officer (interpreter) to Japanese troops holded up in caves at the base of the cliffs, who had refused to surrender. They had been conducting raids on our airbases. We rigged up a PA system on our fantail to broadcast the appeals to surrender. When a few came out, the Marines on the beach began firing on them and that ended the appeals. So the Swanson ended up bombarding the caves with our main battery (5”/38 cal.). It was vital to stop their raids on our airfields.

We were with Task Group 38.4 and were making a strike on Okinawa and Formosa and then continued on to strike Clark Field on the northern part of Luzon.

I do not remember when but it was either going in for Air Strikes on Luzon or retiring from Air Strikes that we hit one of those south China seas gales and was shipping water up and over the bridge and maybe up to the flying bridge. It was quite an evening!

I am sure that our efforts in the second battle of the Philippines sea are already recorded and I could not add much to what has already recorded and I could not add much to what has already been reported but I do recall one of the new, big, fast battleships could not keep up when Admiral Halsey turned the Task Force around to head north.