As we all know, this is a day that will live in infamy (to borrow a phrase). I know it is still a couple of days away, but a frined of mine sent me this story in an email and I though I'd share it and ask others to share some of their stories of loved ones, people they've met or, as in this case, just stories they heard. The WWII generation is dwindling at an alarming rate and we owe it to them and future generations to keep the memories alive.



Stories A Sub Sailor Lived To Tell
Fate Favored Toots Bommarito
(ST. HELENA STAR (CA) 03 DEC 09) ... John Lindblom

Toots Bommarito can tell you stories about American submarine warfare — the “silent service,” as it was called — in World War II.
But if an officer hadn’t refused Bommarito’s pleas to be assigned to the sub he wanted, he wouldn’t be here today to tell them.
Bommarito ultimately was assigned to the USS Gunnel (SS-253) on which he served as a motor machinist mate until war’s end. But if he had had his way, well . . .
As he remembered it, while sitting in the kitchen of his St. Helena home, Bommarito was sent to Midway Island aboard the carrier Yorktown to await assignment to a sub. He was hoping the sub would be the USS Gudgeon, a legendary boat at the time, that, as Bommarito noted, had “sunk a lot of ships,” — 14 eventually, including the first Japanese warship, another submarine, immediately after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
“One day I went down to see the Gudgeon’s captain and said, ‘I want to get on your sub,” Bommarito recalled. “So he asked for me, but the commander of the sub base said, ‘I’m not going to let you on that boat; I have a good boat coming in and I’m going to put you on that one.’”
Bommarito thought it was an opportunity to appeal his case when the Gudgeon returned to port after only two days on a patrol because of a crew member’s appendicitis attack. But again the commander said no.
“Then the Gudgeon went out and got sunk (the result of an air attack). All hands were lost,” said Bommarito.
Luck on his side
Born Salvatore Bommarito to an Italian family in San Francisco and raised in the Napa Valley, “Toots” (an Italian nickname) and a boyhood friend joined the Navy with the intent of going to the submarines. After signing Navy enlistment papers, the friend changed his mind and wanted to be a paratrooper.
“The Navy was going after him for desertion,” said Bommarito, “but he had already gone to the Army.”
The captain who Bommarito saluted when he boarded the Gunnel was Lt. Cmdr. (later to become four-star admiral) John McCain, father of the 2008 GOP presidential candidate.
Fate was on Bommarito’s side for the duration of the war. With one of every four submarine sailors lost, theirs was the heaviest casualty rate of all U.S. forces. Fifty-two subs were sunk.
Japanese warships frequently dropped depth charges from directly above them, their propellors — as one sailor wrote — sounding “like a train on a bridge.” Beneath the surface, sailors sweat profusely from fear as well as the stifling heat. The air — what there was of it — was often foul. Submarines from the World War II era dove with only the oxygen that was present in the hull. So thin, Bommarito said, that you couldn’t strike a match.
But the Gunnel crew once held Christmas services and sang carols while down there dodging depth charges.
“A depth charge below you can blow you to the surface, where you are at (the enemy’s) mercy,” Bommarito said. “I used to tell myself if we get hit and go to the bottom, I’m going to stay right here. I’m not going to swim to the top and let the sharks eat me.
One day,” he recalled, “we took 145 depth charges. You would hear a click, count to 10 and you knew it was going to go off. When you heard a depth charge explode you’d say, ‘Boy, if I get out of this one, I’m really going to be good when I get back.’”
Understandably, promises made under the frenetic conditions of being banged around in a leaky steel tube fathoms beneath the waves were sometimes forgotten in a clearer atmosphere.
Bommarito laughed. “The Shore Patrol never bothered us in San Francisco. They saw the dolphins on our uniforms and just looked the other way. We got away with being drunk and rowdy.”
Peril in all directions
There were many perils for submarine sailors.
“You always wanted to hear the word ‘deep water,’ because once when we were in shallow water a Japanese destroyer took out after us,” Bommarito remembered. “We couldn’t dive, so we made a run for it, but on the radio we heard his range was 1,000 yards and gaining on us. If it gets to 150 yards they got you by the tail. We put our diesel-electric engine at full throttle for half an hour and got away.”
Other attacks came from the sky.
“One night the airplanes were on us steady,” Bommarito remembered. “We dove about 10 times. And every time we came up here comes another airplane.”
Bommarito earned his second-class petty officer’s stripe — and may have saved his boat — by subduing a recurring spark from a muffler that could be seen from the air.
Yet another force to deal with was the sea itself.
On the Gunnel’s last patrol, the waters roiled to typhoon levels “ . . . A helluva typhoon!” said Bommarito. “When it ended, we were sitting in another guy’s area — a long way off course.”
Which could be life-threatening in an era when the allegiance of ships and planes was sometimes impossible to identify.
“If there were two boats in one area, there was no way to say ‘Who are ya? Who are ya? Who are ya?’” said Bommarito.
The Gunnel won five battle stars, sank six ships, saved the lives of a dozen airmen whose planes had been shot down, steamed an overall 88,223 miles and spent 452 days at sea in its eight patrols. It was struck from the Navy’s list of ships and sold for scrap iron in the late ‘50s.

 

My step-granddad, Frank, was in the Army in WWII. I forget which unit he was with.

He was at Normandy Beach but, as he put it, he got there on D-Day+3. Apparently, the "boat" he was on collided with another "boat" while on the way to the beach so, they had to wait 3-days for repairs before they could storm the beach...

He then marched, with his unit, from Normandy to Pilsen Czechoslovakia. Along the way, he picked up a few souvenirs - at an abandoned bunker, he found some items a German officer/soldier had left behind including an Iron Cross medal, a Walther 32cal (PP?) pistol, and a double-edged dagger/sheath that looked to be more for ceremonial use than for combat and had the words "Ulles Fur Deutschland" - it looked almost exactly like this one:


I don't know what happened to those items after he passed-away...

 

both my grandpas served in world war 2... and korea... but i never thought to ask either one of them questions about it... i wish i had... lots of things i wish i had done before they left my side physically.. but that is the one thing i really wish i had done... was asked about the wars they served in...

 

My father shipped out to the Pacific from San Francisco in the summer of 1943 after he enlisted at 17 in April of that year. He ended up with the 32nd Infrantry Division (Red Arrow) under the command of MacArthur. Was in MacArthur's leap frog operation up the coast of New Guinea, the Invasion of Leyte and the Invasion of Luzon where they were still mopping up when the war ended. Then was part of the occupation forces on Kyushu till February 1946. I find this out partially from him and the rest via the 32nd's web site and a few other sites. As much as I would like to ask questions I have never pushed to do so and leave it up to him to release tidbits now and then. He has passed on his war souvenirs in the last couple of years to me.

 

My great uncle fought with Patton against Rommel.

When I was stationed in Pearl Harbor, we would open the boat up to all visitors on Dec the 7th. We only attracted sub sailors as it was a submarine that I was serving on.

These brave souls would endulge us with stories all day long, we'd feed them and give them the run of the ship.

The WWII sub sailors were the true pioneers in modern day undersea warfare. Thier many sacrifices and lessons learned are still honored today.

If you've never had the opportunity to go to Hawaii and visit all of the memorials and meuseums, then it should become a priority.

The Arizona memorial will bring any normal person to tears.

Tim

 

My dad went on Okinawa on d-day + 10. He didn't take part in the main battle, but he saw enough. I still have his pictures, including a B29 with the nose art "Overexposed". He was a machinist's mate, but according to him, you don't spend much time trying to fix things in a combat zone.

He died in '97. They are going fast.

 

My Dad was in the Navy - assigned to the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO).

Dad worked for a while at the Newport News Navy Ship Yard after being transfered back, stateside. (Mid-war.)
His MOS was Electrician's Mate. He helped wire the USS Essex and the USS Hornet.

Dad has never talked (much) about the war.

Dad's last ship assignment was aboard an LSM. That's a Landing Ship Medium.
It was 203 ft long, 34 ft wide at the beam. Max speed - 13 knots.
Dad has a 'log' of the ship, and it took them 30 days to travel from San Diego to Pearl Harbor!

Dad did say that the most scared that he's EVER been, was during a cyclone off the coast of the Philippines!
He said that he can remember his ship riding up one side of a wave, then back down the other side, during that cyclone, and the 'keel plates' shaking/vibrating, and tanks and trucks (that were onboard) bouncing like toys.
Dad said that seeing/fighting the enemy wasn't nearly as scary as that cyclone.

If memory serves me, he said that 13 ships were lost during that cyclone!


"The Greatest Generation" is a perfect description of the men and women of that era.

 

My Dad served overseas in the US Army during WWII. Never talks too much about it, but from what he has said in past years, he saw a lot of Hell at a young age. Both of his brothers also served, and they are still all alive and in their 80's. Tom Brokaw was right; They are the Greatest Generation.

 

My dad spent 4 yrs in the south Pacific during WW2. There aren't many of his generation left. They were great heroes that didn't believe they were heroes just men doing a job. They were real patriots who loved the USA. Dad just thought he did what he had to do for his country. Once he got home he moved past the war & didn't talk about it much. All the vets from that war that I know did much the same. I believe they are the greatest generation this country ever had. Thank God they were there when our country needed them.

 

Echoing a lot of you- both of my grandfathers served during the war, although my mom's dad stayed stateside and trained pilots in Texas I believe. My dad's dad was in the Army and I believe was in Europe for most of the D-day operations- I know my grandma told me he was involved in the Ardennes Offensive. She likes to tell a story he told her about how he was cooking french fries in his helmet when his unit was caught by a surprise German attack.

Would have liked to have talked to my dad's dad more but he died of cancer when I was 8. He was only in his mid 60's but had spent most of his life working in chemical plants as a welder, which is probably where the cancer came from.

I salute all those guys that served. It's difficult to imagine WWII as something that happened from watching footage of it on TV, but these guys lived it. Amazing.

 

My dad said the same thing, that the war didn't hold a candle to the typhoon. It may have been this storm:

Typhoons and Hurricanes: Pacific typhoon, October 1945

All of my dad's records were lost. He was driving a 2 1/2 truck with gasoline barrels in it. The wind got so bad, he couldn't keep it on the road. He abandoned it, and took refuge in a culvert or a tomb, --can't recall exactly. He watched it eventually blow away, tumbling in the wind.

As indicated in the above link, good thing the war was over at that point...

 

That's the one!!!

I don't know why I wrote 'cyclone'. I knew it was a typhoon. ("Braincramps", I suppose.)
Also, I wrote Philippines. Dad did say Okinawa. I guess my memory isn't what it used to be.

And "Louise"!
I remember, now. Dad made comment that he survived Typhoon Louise, to come home and meet a young lady, and eventually marry. . . a woman named Louise! (He says, she was a typhoon, too!)

 

Grand dad was in Italy in late 43 to early 45 in the Army. He remembered being attacked by the Italian air force several times (mere annoyance)........Then being attacked by the Luftwaffe (German air force) That one caused many casualties..........Also that Italy is colder than Minnesota in winter!.......Mediterranean climate indeed!.....About actual combat, he never spoke......Just that he knew how to keep his head down when the 88s and MG-42s were working them over.

 

Thanks for sharing, everyone. Keep the stories coming. I love hearing (reading) them!

 

If anyone is a Naval / seagoing buff like me then I would highly recommend reading a book called "Iron Coffins".

It illustrates the rise and fall of Germany's U-boat campaign. I couldn't put it down till it was done.

Tim