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Show ROB RT D. HAFFER PRIL 29 2002 a sudden, I was down in the stateroom my roommate and I had bought a portable r cord player in Philadelphia before leaving. He had been the drum major of the band at Yale when he was in college and he had a pair of drumsticks and a practice pad too. But we were listening to-and I forgot what record-when the general alarm sounded and we thought, Well, we're going to have to go to general quarters anyhow. So I took time to shut the record player off, took the record and put it in the container and so forth. All of a sudden, the 40-millimeters above our stateroom started firing. And I thought, Boy! So my battle station at that time was in what was called air-aft and I'll have to show you that again here on this. I was in charge of the port five-inch guns. Now air aft would be right in here, air forward would be up here, near the bow. I went up the ladder as fast as I could go and the guns were firing away at the time and, of course, we weren't very well disciplined, so we were shooting at most anything; probably a lot of shadows. But about, oh, I'd say, about thirty minutes, the Chicago was on our port side, and all of a sudden she was hit by a torpedo. And I had a classmate aboard there, Walt Cornell. Luckily, he survived. But, anyhow, the Chicago was hit and we all were running northeast, I guess, shooting like mad, and finally the Japanese pulled away. Now why they didn't press the attack further, I don't know. So the next day, the Chicago was dead in the water and we left some destroyers to protect her and we went back to Efate and regrouped; we were all a bit shaken. BEC: Yeah, I imagine. ROB: But then, the Denver joined, and Admiral Arleigh Burke's destroyer squadron; they came up and joined us, and Task Force 39 was formed with the Cruiser Division 12 and the eight destroyers of Arleigh Burke's squadron. Then we began 31 |
