E-mail of December 8, 2000:

Hi! Afew corrections to add to your notes

Sat. June 16 1945

I came back from liberty and saw that the truc lights were at a odd angle. PO 1c/c Liethe had the Qrtr. Dk. watch and was busy reading with his feet propped up to keep from falling over.

WE STARTED TO CHECK OUT WHY THE SHIP WAS LISTING AND DISCOVERED that the yard birds had put a 200 LB test on the fire main and left the ship to go to lunch. The ship was on the bottom by this time. The flooding valve in the stbd pyrotechnic locker was open which allowed flooding in to comp. 301A which soon filled up and counter flooded C201 and then down to C301B. Both 201's were engine room storage spaces the parts were in steel box about 24x24x48 inches and were quite heavy with out any thing in them. The parts them selves were wrapped in a rust resistant cloth after being dosed in cosmoline. A good seal but not under pressure of two hundred #.

When we discovered the problem 201B was just filling so I PEELED DOWN AND DIVED INTO THE COMP.201A TO SHUT OFF THE VALVE that was when I cut my hand on a banding wire not when the log said I did. I was sewed up at the naval station next to the shipyard by a corpsman as our Chief was on leave. At this time half of the crew was on leave a quarter who were left was at school and all but the watch standers were over to Peeps tavern which was across from the ship yard and was reached by going through the yard time clock station so you were not seen going out. [Not legal but we had thirsty people] After getting the valve shut off we rounded up our duty section that was at the tavern.

That was when the fun started the yard birds drifted back but would not help us so we broke out a Submersible pump and tried to rig it we found we had went through the war and had a British pump left over from when we were launched as the HMS Amity BAM 4. SO I got out a P60 Handy Billie and lowered it into the compartment on a rope. Went down and hooked up a inch and a half discharge line and a hard suction/strainer started it and got out of compartment This was strictly against navy Regs. but any port in a storm. We dewatered the compartment and checked our spare parts and found them water logged so we had to bring up the box and unwrap the parts wash them in diesel fuel and re wrap them - a thing that took us three days. I think there were four of us. The officer of the watch a young Ensign was entertaining a Navy Nurse in his stateroom and was so busy he did not know any thing was wrong till I went into the Ward Room to see why he did not come out. Why? The hedge hogs did not fire off of Pearl Harbor the cut off switch was shut off in the fwd. ER. The next day we were getting ready to go into Pearl Harbor and when you set the special sea detail you turn on all yellow switches on the switch board ,and Wosssssh of went the hedge hogs onto the shallows near the beach. The same question why did we not open fire with the 3 inch and forty MM guns? Parts were in the magazine to protect them from the weather. By the time we got into magazine and replaced the parts in guns too late.

You must remember this was our first trip out new men and officers . The only reason we won the war was we must of screwed up less then the Japs and they were in this naval war business longer than us at the time.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy and prosperous New year.

- Berry

(This is a letter that Chief wrote to me)

Hi, Roy

Just another word to tell you how much I enjoy the picture.

Your grandfather's engine room was under the last stack - #2 ER.

The gun on the bow was a 3"50, the two on the stern gun tubs are single barrel 20mm. After we got hit at Okinawa, we went back in yards and they installed mechanical drive twin 40mm and a power driven 3"50 up in the bow and 4 twin barrel 20mm instead of open sighted singles we had. The new 20 had Mark 26 optical sights, I believe.

That square structure between the stacks was the 20mm clipping room where 20mm shells about 6" long were loaded into empty drum magazines by a black steward named Ed Latimer, who reached up to take a magazine off the bulkhead and couldn't get it loose and grabbed the one next to it when a shell came through the bulkhead and hit the magazine he couldn't get off a minute before. It kept him from getting hit. He grabbed the burning magazine and threw it over the side. I think he got a Legion of Merit for saving a major explosion.

This all happened on April 6, 1945, when we had 3 planes crash on us and shot 3 others down. We didn't get credit for the one that crashed on the USS NEWCOMB. We had 17 men wounded and none killed. When Admiral Kelly Turner heard we had gotten hit the last time he asked where we were stacking them. We took some people off of the NEWCOMB and pulled some out of the water. When I came into the mess hall we had 2" of bloody water on the deck because the mess tables had become the emergency ward.

Lt. Cmdr. Abbot did a wonderful job of conning the ship to keep us from getting sunk.

I was in the #1 hole and an electrician named Vicars, who was a pimpley faced kid, tried to hide under the deck plate (he was on the telephone from the bridge so he knew what was happening). His face turned white and the pimples stood out like dimes.

The lid of a 5# box of cocoa powder we had hidden behind the #1 HP air compressor got blown off when the plane hit the side of the ship. The contents got sucked up the stack and down came a damage control party thinking we were on fire. We were all laughing so hard at Vicars that they thought we were nuts.

We had an electrician in each engine room holding in the breakers with a piece of wood. We were going faster than we did at builder's trials.

We ended up the day by taking the NEWCOMB, who had her whole midship superstructure blown off (you could look right down into her engine room) and the LEUTZE (another can) in tandem tow. Our skipper was awarded the Bronze Star, and Bowell, a signalman who dove off of the wing of the bridge and saved a man in the water, got a Legion of Merit. Both awards were well deserved.

The plane that hit our starboard 40mm and then went over to the other one knocked our starboard shaft out of line, and every time we tried to go too fast it would make noise. I later was blinded for three days and the Captain of Engineering Officers was, too, because I was welding the shaft to braces to keep it from dragging in the water as we kicked the other screw up to speed. The place I was welding was a shaft alley which was painted in white enamel and the reflection got into my eyes even wearing a welding hood. I was no welder, but I made it hold even though my weld looked like a rabbit had diarrhea.

We transferred our wounded and joined a task force of over-the-hill ships (the West Virginia and two others) to go out and stop a Jap task force of a battleship plus cruisers and escorts. We were it because Halsey had to go up to Japan to bail out our so-called English allies who got too big for their britches.

We were lucky that he launched planes at maximum range to stop the battleship. We would have been sunk before we even had them in sight . Our 3" had a range of 3 miles. Their 18" had a range of 20 miles. The old U.S. battleship had a range of about 14 miles, so we were being sacrificed to give Halsey enough time to launch. His planes landed at Iwo Jima which had just been secured.

Well, thanks again. I'll e-mail you when I get back home in April.

Wilbert "Chief" Berry.

[This is a letter to the editor of the Naval Minewarfare Association newsletter]

Dear Editor,

On April 6, 1945 at Okinawa, the Mighty D — USS DEFENSE (AM317) — was on radar picket line to relieve some destroyers who had gotten hit. Around 1700 the Japs came in. We splashed three of them and had three more crash on, or close enough that debris hit us.

One of the planes (Vals) missed us and crashed on the USS NEWCOMB and opened her up so later when we took her in tow we could look down into her interior. We later picked up the LEUTZE and had the two cans in tow.

That evening of the attack we were doing 20.6 knots. That’s TWO knots better than our best speed in shakedown — but we had an electrician holding in the cirduit breaker with a broom handle and were really moving and shaking things loose. Bolts, nuts, luggings came pouring down out of the stack risers.

A five pound box of cocoa behind the #1 HP air compressor starting panel was crushed from the force of the plane hitting the starboard side, the lid came off and the powder was swept up and out. The next thing we knew, the Damage Control Party was coming down — they thought we were on fire.

We had, I think, Seventeen wounded. Among them, Ed Hamilton of Jackson, Michigan, and NMA member.

W.F Berry.