Robert D. Shaffer, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, April 29, 2002: Saving the Legacy tape no. 448 and 449

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ROB RT D. H FF R PRI 29 2002 backup. But after the battle we went out and operated with the battl hip w t f th Hawaiian Islands for some little time. My first roommate on board the Hom t wa a young naval reserve ensign named Mason Stevens. He had graduated from Yal and wa working for American Airlines in Washington, D.C., when he was called to active duty. His home was on Martha's Vineyard. I had never heard of the place before, but found out that it was an island off the southwest coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the Atlantic Ocean. Our stateroom was the most forward one on the starboard side of the ship, down where the curve of the bow begins. When the Hornet pulled into Pearl Harbor, after the battle of Midway, Mason decided that he wanted to see what a dive bombing run was like. She, he somehow convinced a pilot, named Be bas, to take him up for a run. Once the SBD started the simulated dive bombing run, it never pulled up and went into the ocean. I had to write the sorrowful letter to Mason's parents. My second roommate, who took over Mason's space, was another naval reserve ensign named Steve Fuller. He had originally been assigned to a destroyer on the north Atlantic run to the British Isles. However, he suffered from acute seasickness. He said that when he went up on watch, he propped himself against a stanchion on the bridge and put a bucket between his feet and so stood his watch. As a result of this condition, he was assigned to the Hornet, a much larger ship, which did not roll and pitch as much, and was given doses of whatever seasickness medicine existed at that time. Then we came back in and I was detached from the Hornet and the morning she left, I got off. I was sent back to the States, because by then I'd become a captain. I went aboard, say, in October of 1941 and in the summer of '42 I was a captain. BEC: Wow. 27