Brave Ships

The Navy Department, still spooning out the results of Japan's Kamikaze attacks to the U.S. public, last week told the story of three brave ships. There was the saga of the escort carrier Suwanee, smashed by Kamikazes in Leyte Gulf last October and now back in service. There was the story of the venerable battleship California--the "old prune barge"--raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor, hit twice but now back at work. And there was the story of the Intrepid.*

The Intrepid is a big (over 30,000 tons) Essex-class carrier and has one of the great ship records of the war.

She has been hit six times. During the great raid on Truk in February 1944, an aerial torpedo left her unmaneuverable and flaming. Captain Thomas L. Sprague (now a rear admiral commanding a carrier group) ordered a sail rigged on the forecastle, spotted his planes forward to trap the wind, and shifted cargo weight aft to put the stern low in the water. Steered by her engines, the Intrepid worked back to Mare Island Navy Yard for repairs.

Off the Philippines. Off Luzon last October a suicide plane crashed into one of the Intrepid's gun galleries, killed ten men. Six wounded Negro steward's mates stuck by their guns, won Navy Crosses. On Nov. 25, also off Luzon, a suicide plane killed 32 men. A few minutes later another Kamikaze struck the flight deck, started more fires, caused more casualties. Superb damage-control work saved the Intrepid, and she limped back to California again for repairs.

By last April the Intrepid's flyers had been in action again--at Iwo Jima, Hong Kong, Formosa, Tokyo. She had also survived two more Kamikaze hits. In the last, off Okinawa, the Intrepid lost nine men killed, 21 wounded. After her third trip to a repair yard since early 1944, she was back in the war last week.

*Named after Stephen Decatur's ketch which sailed into Tripoli harbor Feb. 16, 1804 and burned Bainbridge's U.S. frigate Philadelphia, which had been captured by pirates.

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