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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ROBERT D. HAFFER PRIL 29, 2002 ROB: Now that's what you call calm or whatever. Anyhow he wa a p rfect choice for officer of the deck at general quarters because he didn t get flabb rgasted or anything else. Like I say, he just died this last year. He was also a Yale graduate. Now let s see, where was I? We were still in the Solomons. One of the times that Admiral Ainsworth's task force went up there, the USS Helena was torpedoed and the survivors ended up on an island called Vella Lavella. You know where that is? Okay. One of my classmates, B.T. Kelly, was a Marine officer aboard the Helena and he survived the sinking. But one of the operations we had to undertake was to go up and rescue the survivors of the sinking of the Helena. We went up and covered, there were a couple of APDs, which are destroyers converted into troop transports. Most of them were old four­stack destroyers from World War I that were converted into APDs. But they were a fast type of troop transport, and they were able to pick these survivors up, and I don't remember where they ended up, whether at Espiritu Santo or Efate. But I forgot to tell you about one thing that happened aboard the Hornet. The meteorologist was a lieutenant commander by the name of Arthur Cumberledge and he had the most even disposition of anybody: he was always mad ... BEC: (laughs). ROB: ... because he had to get up at three in the morning to shoot the weather. So we junior officers had the saying that he was always mad. But the reason I brought it up, when the Montpelier pulled into Noumea, New Caledonia, I met Commander Cumberledge. He had survived the sinking of the Hornet. You know the Hornet was sunk off Santa Cruz Island and he had survived. And, surprisingly, I ran into him there. 35