Monday, Nov. 22, 1943

How the Carriers Were Sunk

The PT had an ugly duckling painted on the bow. The duckling pointed to itself with one wing and above was the legend, "Who, Me?" The skipper was Theodore Berlin, a slender, dark Reservist of 22 who had come to the Navy from the University of California at Los Angeles.

The Who, Me? was mooching along in company with two landing craft (infantry and tanks) some 30 miles south of Empress Augusta Bay. One of the PT's three engines had burned out, but she could still keep up with her consorts. A gorgeous sunset was draining from the clouds and twilight was closing in. As TIME Correspondent William Chickering later got the story:

Fire and Fish. At 7:15 the lookout reported planes. Berlin started back toward the cockpit; it was already too late. The only thing he could do was lie down, so he stretched out on deck and calmly gave an order: "All right, general quarters." The port gunner, a blond youngster named Richard Dudziak, started to fire into the engine of an approaching plane. It looked like an American SBD but the location of two blue-burning exhausts meant a Jap torpedo plane. As the plane passed over, Skipper Berlin could almost reach and touch the red ball on the wings. One wing tip knocked off the Who, Me?'s antenna, and another scraped the forward gunner. The plane swept like a piece of paper into the darkening sea.

Berlin was up quickly. He took the wheel, drove the ship in a small, speedy circle. Other planes were coming in at the LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry). Its 20-mm. machine guns opened up and the first burst hit the belly of a plane which blew up above the Who, Me? and went on into the sea. Two others crashed; the burning planes lit the dusk.

In the excitement, hardly anyone realized that the Japs were launching torpedoes. Falling night was apparently playing tricks with Jap vision. The broad wake of a PT, plus the outline of the LCI, must have looked like bigger game. The torpedoes were launched too close to arm themselves and explode on impact. Four, possibly seven torpedoes were launched. One dolphined over the stern of the Who, Me?, another under the stern. One caught the LCI squarely, tore through the steel sides without-exploding. It smashed instruments, and flying debris wounded two men.

The Who, Me? idled in the darkness, not sure where the other ships were. A red blinker flashed in the night; it was the LCI calling for aid. Skipper Berlin ran his ship alongside. After a hasty conference the LCI's skipper ordered "abandon ship" and men poured over the side onto the Who, Me?'s flat wooden deck.

One of the Who, Me?'s crew looked over the side. Just below the gunner was a hole 9 ft. by 3. At the moment of the first attack a torpedo had passed clean through the Who, Me?'s bow. Below decks one of the crew found a torpedo's two-foot fin and rudder of fine stainless steel --it had sheered off the toilet seat from the crew's "head" and lodged in the crew's quarters.

"Damn Good Ship." The Who, Me? seemed as crowded as Coney on Sunday. Going by the crowd, slapping backs, was the husky gunnery officer of the LCI, Pete Kirille, once a professional football player for the New York Yankees. Kirille looked over at the dark shadow of the LCI TIME, NOVEMBER 22, 1943 and said: "It's a damn good ship. I'm going to save her. I want five volunteers." He got more than that. Kirille and his volunteers climbed aboard the LCI and disappeared in the darkness. All the ships got to port.

The next day the Tokyo radio screamed triumphantly that one large and one small carrier "had been sunk off Bougainville.

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