Officers’ Clothing Complicates Communication On USS Franklin
I have read many stories about the events of World War II. Still, I have only read one in which officers’ clothing contributed to a massive communications breakdown between captain and crew.
Many other US Navy ships were damaged or sunk in the Pacific Theater during World War II. I can find no record of officers’ clothing given to enlisted men on any other ship during WWII under similar circumstances. Franklin wasn’t the only carrier damaged in battle. Two minutes after her attack on 19 March, one of her sister ships, USS Wasp, took a single bomb hit, killing 200.
The key difference here was that the bomb that struck Wasp did not explode on the hangar deck containing planes fully loaded with rockets, ammunition, and fuel. Her crew quickly controlled the fires, extinguishing them in about 15 minutes.
Other carriers were damaged or sunk earlier in the war, but were in warmer latitudes during warmer seasons.
Many Factors Contribute to the Confusion
The circumstances on Franklin on 19 March 1945 were different. At 0708, on 19 March 1945, she was off the coast of Japan along with nearly 100 other ships in Task Force 58. Their mission was to destroy as many Japanese military assets as possible so they couldn’t be used in the upcoming invasion of Okinawa. That morning, a lone Japanese bomber snuck through the numerous defenses and dropped two bombs that detonated above Franklin’s hangar deck and started massive conflagrations. Heavy explosions wracked the ship for the next five hours.1 Water used to fight the vast fires flowed through holes and vents in the decks to flood numerous lower decks’ compartments.2
As men escaped from those decks, they often had to wade or swim through those partially flooded compartments or were inundated by water spraying from the bomb holes and vents.
Most of their battle stations were below deck, and they were not dressed for foul weather.
When the men arrived on the flight deck, they faced winter off the Japanese coast. One of the cruisers that came to Franklin’s aid was USS Pittsburgh. Her deck log for that day states that the air temperature at 0800 was 48 degrees F with an 18 mph wind. That puts the wind chill at 39 degrees. During the day, the temperature rose into the mid-50s, with the wind speed dropping to 11-12 mph. The wind chill crept into the 40s.
Communication was difficult. Only one phone line worked on the entire ship. It was between the bridge and Steering Aft, where five men were trapped. The noise caused by secondary explosions was horrendous. Franklin’s Captain Leslie Gehres had to rely on runners who often could not find the officers they sought.
Historian Steve Jackson, in his book Lucky Lady: The World War II Heroics of the USS Santa Fe and Franklin, stated that Lt. Commander Joseph O’Callahan, the ship’s priest, sent men below to find dry clothing from the undamaged forward compartments of the ship. Many of these compartments were those of junior officers, and the clothing distributed belonged to them.3
Rumors Spread
Unfortunately, as many of these enlisted men evacuated to Santa Fe, others, seeing “officers” leave the ship, thought the “Abandon Ship” order had been issued and followed them. Confusion abounded as some would swear later they had heard the order given to abandon ship. Many had already witnessed Admirals Davison and Bogen leaving Franklin along with their staff.
Captain Gehres did order the men in the air squadrons to evacuate the ship onto Santa Fe, as they were not trained in damage control. Many of the ship’s crew followed them, not understanding the orders to leave were only for the air squadrons.
Rumors of the order to abandon ship rapidly spread as men saw those wearing officers’ clothing leaving the ship. When he saw men leaving the ship without authorization, Captain Gehres was enraged.4
However, the noise and chaos hampered the ability to communicate effectively from the bridge to the vast flight deck and he was unable to call them back.
The inability to communicate effectively, rumors, noise, dense smoke, wet clothing, and the weather combined to create a situation not seen at any other time of the war. If that weren’t enough, senior officers such as Captain Gehres and his executive officer, Commander Joseph Taylor, also suffered from smoke inhalation, making it harder for them to communicate in the first critical minutes.5
My research continues into the events of 19 March 1945. For example, I recall reading about a bullhorn that had gone dead, either battery-powered or plugged into the ship’s power. (The ship lost power early on.) If you have any information about the events onboard Franklin or one of the ships that came to her aid, please use the contact form to reach out to me.
Did you arrive here via a search engine? I am the author of the forthcoming book Heroes By The Hundreds: The Story of the USS Franklin (CV-13). In addition to writing about the bravery of the crews that saved her, I will discuss the lessons we can learn in leadership and decision-making and the changes the US Navy made because of those lessons.
Feel free to follow me on Facebook. There, I am M. Glenn Ross, Author. I also write a monthly newsletter, Glenn’s Action Report, about subjects I find interesting in my research. You can sign up for it below. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question. Thanks for reading.
-Glenn
Footnotes
- USS Franklin CV-13 War Damage Report Navy Damage Control Report September 1946 20
- War Damage Report 18-19
- Steve Jackson, Lucky Lady: The World War II Heroics Of The USS Santa Fe and Franklin_ (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004) 423
- Joseph A. Springer, Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in World War II, (Minneapolis, MN, Zenith Press, 2011) 26
- Action Report USS Franklin 14-24 March 1945 Enc. C p. 2
