FIRST RE-SUPPLY MISSION TO MINDORO

We are headed toward the western end of Leyte Gulf in company with ten other destroyers, several Liberty Ships, L.S.T.’s and L.C.I.’s - numbering about 60 ships in all. This will be the first re-supply convoy after the initial landing at Mindoro. You can bet we will have a run-in with the Nips. The dope is - we will have air cover during the day, but lacking night fighters in the area - the nights will be open season.

December 20th arrived with one of the most beautiful sunrises you will ever see - it is extremely hard to correlate the war with such intense beauty, but the constant reporting of “Bogies” (enemy aircraft) doesn’t leave much doubt what lies ahead. Mostly, it is our planes that are reported showing no I.F.F. We start a merry chase after some small fishing boats, but are ordered to stand by another destroyer that has engaged a large Sanpan. We arrived in time to see the Sanpan crew hit the water. They refused to be picked up Finally, the other destroyer was able to pick up one Japanese officer to question. Several times during the day and night it seemed we would be attack by Nip aircraft, but the raids always evaporated out of sight and out of range. We are skirting Panay, so things can get hot anytime.

Thirty minutes before dawn on December 21st we went to morning General Quarters. The sky is overcast and a little threatening - almost foreboding. Evidently we are picking up a cross-swell coming in from the China Sea, because the calm seas of the last two days is broken up and choppy. About 1000 the “Bogies” finally materialized into two “Oscars” that dove out of the low clouds and went screaming through the convoy, dead center. I think we were the only ship that didn’t fire. One plane was downed off the port side by one of the other destroyers - it could be seen burning after the smoke from the guns cleared.

Somebody was firing over us which gave us the jitters, but we ceased tracking when the second plane lost his nerve and turned away. No damage reported on our team. Charles Richard Dragoo, S1/c was pronounced dead of asphyxiation at 1400 by the ship’s doctor, Lt. Herbert Allen. Three hours of heroic effort failed to revive him after he entered Compartment A-401-A to get some helmets.

We had just enough time after coming off watch to get a quick shower, then it was back to General Quarters. This time the war really caught up with us.

The first wave of Jap planes to come over was 15 dive bombers and fighters. We were on station well away from the convoy and separated from the other destroyers, so it seemed as if we bore almost the full brunt of the attack. We pick up a plane coming in at about 4,000-yards on the port bow and start firing.

We hit him with every gun that would bear, but he never wavered. Flames burst from his belly at about 1,000-yards and still he came on. He wouldn’t blow up and he wouldn’t crash. It appeared he would surely suicide into us. About 100-yards from the ship his wing finally tipped and he slipped off to crash in the water, a scant 30-feet from the port side of the ship. He was so close it seemed you could touch him. After the impact in the water, many of the crew picked up pieces of the mangled aluminum thrown all over the ship by the force of the explosion.

We had a short lull after this attack and learned that all 440-volt power forward of the aft engine room was temporarily knocked out by the concussion of the explosion when the Kamikaze hit so near. Approximately 15-minutes later the next wave of planes, consisting of about 12 medium twin engine bombers, started in.

Targets were litterly everywhere. A group of three came low from our starboard, just about 50-feet off the water, and though two pulled out of the concentrated gun fire, one tried for a crash. He exploded just off the wing of the bridge, spraying the ship with spare parts again. About this time, a “Lilly” started a run on the ship aft about 195-degrees. Gun-45 (#5-40MM) and one 20-MM on the fantail were the only guns to open fire. About the time a good track was established, Gun-45 jammed. The jam was cleared almost immediately, at great personal risk, by Dave Brown (Gun-45 Gun Captain - now deceased. Dave was later awarded the Bronze Star for this bit of heroics.) Why the Nip never dropped his bomb or crashed into us, no one knows, but that agonizing moment passes. The topside crew saw him bounce from several hits which, at the last moment, probably caused his course to change obliquely across the fantail. Another ship in the convoy reported seeing a plane leave us smoking badly, but we were too busy to notice. The two planes we definitely knocked down close aboard were “Tojo”, 1722 and “Lilly”, 1740 - an awful lot condensed into a few minutes and I do mean “awful”.

When the area cleared of “Bogies”, two L.S.T.’s (Landing Ship Tanks) were burning badly, one of which had to be abandoned. We sent our whaleboat to the Liberty ship Hobart Baker to pick up a badly injured survivor from the L.S.T.-460 (J. N. Abbott, GM3/c) because they had no doctor aboard. At 1900, just before it got too dark for us to see, we spotted a man with a life jacket in the water on the port side. J. McCann, S2/c from L.S.T.-749 was recovered from the water suffering from burns to the face and arms. Both men were in pretty bad shape, but will live. At long last darkness settled in and we couldn’t see any more survivors in the water (hope we didn’t miss any). We set course to take our position with the convoy which was raided twice before we joined up - but, no more ships were damaged. We stay at battle stations all night.

During the quietness of the night I looked back on the day with a lot of mixed emotions and confused impressions - such as anger for the useless death of Charles Dragoo and the desperate effort to save him - sorry for the survivors we picked up - clearness of the sound of empty shell cases banging around during the terrific cacophony of noise - the seeming quietness of the 5-inch guns until their angle of fire would reach a bearing where the concussion would lift you off your feet - the absence of the expected noise of the crash of the Kamikaze on the port side - somebody yelling “Cease Fire” when the “Tojo” was so close you could autograph the “meat balls” on his wings - the tremendous amount of smoke, cork and charred gun-cotton, and in the middle of it all, #2 Fireroom blows tubes.

When we arrive off Port Frisco, San Jose, Mindoro with our convoy the moon had set and the night was gorgeous - big, clear, twinkling stars. The kind of stars you strain your eyes at, because any second one of them may turn out to be a motor exhaust of a Jap plane. At the slightest hint of dawn over the island, we began a slow circling seaward as a screen for the unloading on the beach. We fired several times at Jap planes during the day even though we were suppose to have air cover from a P-38 base just established on the island - they must have had more urgent business elsewhere. One dive bomber just missed suiciding a Liberty Ship and we watched a lone “Tojo” splash alongside the destroyer USS McGOWAN DD-678.

We transferred the survivors we picked up and Charles Dragoo’s body to a landing barge for transportation to the beach and an hour later the survivors were being flown out by PBM. Charles will be buried, by strangers, on Mindoro, Philippine Islands. Finally, we gathered our flock together and stood out to sea for the voyage back to Leyte Gulf. You begin to wonder how long a person can keep going with only snatches of sleep. After sundown, we remained at Battle Stations until almost midnight - then back to the mid-watch. The Japs are using a lots of “window” (aircraft dropping strips of tinfoil to try to foul up your radar readings) tonight - two raids are tracked in to 10,000-yards before they turn away. General Quarters again at 0500 - no sleep.

Looking back over the last four days, I’d say the crew didn’t perform too badly for a group whose average age was 19.7 years.

(USS FOOTE Deck Log, USS FOOTE War Diary and Gene Schnaubelt’s account.)



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