The Pittsburgh Press (March 14, 1945)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC (delayed) – Now I’ve had my first experience as a saltwater doughboy. I’ll try to tell you about it in a few thousand well-chosen paragraphs.
This series will be about life aboard an airplane carrier. My carrier was part of that first strike on the Tokyo area, and we helped out at Iwo Jima, too.
We’ll start right at the beginning, and within the limits of naval security, I’ll try to tell you what living on an aircraft carrier is like, and how a big task force works when it goes out after the enemy.
First, we boarded a plane and flew for a long time, and landed on a tiny coral island, white and glaring im the tropic sun. Tall slanting palm trees waved their green fronds from their topknots.
The island was framed in a wide circle of bright green water. And that was bordered by a thin line of snow-white surf, where the rolling waves beat themselves to a froth over the submerged reef at the edge of the water. And on beyond that, everywhere as far as the eye could see, was the heavy dark blue of the deep, deep ocean.
And out there on that dark blue water, lay the United States Fleet. Hundreds and hundreds of ships. The Navy says officially that it was the greatest concentration of fighting ships ever assembled in the history of the world. It was something to take your breath away.
The world’s mightiest
True, I have seen bigger fleets. Both in our invasions of Sicily and Normandy we had more ships. But they were not predominantly warships. Mainly they were landing craft and troop-carrying vessels.
But these here were fighting ships – the world’s mightiest. Battleships and cruisers and carriers and uncountable destroyers. And all of the swarm of escorts and tugs and oilers and repair ships that go with them.
And this wasn’t the only fleet. Others started from other anchorages scattered out over the Pacific, hundreds and thousands of miles from us. They started on a time-table schedule, so that they would all converge in the Upper Pacific at the same time.
If you had felt lonely and afraid in anticipation of the ordeal upon which you were setting out, it disappeared when you made yourself a cell in this mighty armada.
Plenty of company
For when we bore down upon the waters of Japan and Iwo Jima, we were nearly a thousand ships and we were beyond a half a million men!
Whatever happened to you, you would sure have a hell of a lot of company.
A small fast motorboat, its forepart covered with canvas like a prairie schooner, took me from the island to the carrier to which I had been assigned. It was a long way out, and we were half an hour bobbing up and down through the spray.
Ships were so thick we had to weave in and out around them. The water was speckled with small boats running from ship to ship, and back and forth to the island. The weather was hot, and sometimes you stood up and took the spray, because it felt good.
I had asked to be put on a small carrier, rather than a big one. The reasons were many. For one thing, the large ones are so immense and carry such a huge crew that it would be like living in the Grand Central Station. I felt I could get the “feel” of a carrier more quickly, could become more intimately a member of the family, if I were to go on a smaller one.
Also, the smaller carriers have had very little credit and almost no glory, and I’ve always had a sort of yen for poor little ships that have been neglected.
And also again (although this of course had nothing to do with my choice, of course, of course) there was an old wives’ superstition to the effect that the Japs always went for the big carriers first, and ignored the little ones.
Further investigation revealed this to be pure fiction, but what you don’t know at the time doesn’t hurt you, and I didn’t know this at the time. So gaily I climbed aboard my new home – curious, but admittedly uneager for my first taste of naval warfare in the Pacific.