Jan. 4, 1945
Kay my Dearest:
We were awakened with Air Defense at 03 :45. I guess they were just looking us over as they stayed quite far away.
Our Captain, called us together and told us what we were going to bombard and also all the targets. So I guess we will start shooting day after tomorrow. We are going to bombard for 4 days steady. We will probably have an air attack tonight. Our planes shot down one plane this morning.
Well, it’s eight-thirty at night and there was plenty of action aound here for a while. One Jap plane crash dived into one of our C.V.E’s. and Boy! It really hit it. The whole flight deck is on fire. It was about 1000 yards ahead of us.
We are now going up along side of it. We passsed a lot of fellows in the water. We were going too fast to pick them up. They have passed the word to abandon ship.
We can see sailors throwing ammunition over the side.
There are about 8 planes on the flight deck. There is so much fire they can’t take off.
We can now see the sailors jumping off the ship. There are 4 Cans, standing by to pick them up.
Ever since she was first hit ,we could hear her ammunition shooting off. The Carrier is really burning now, the planes on the flight deck are all burning.
The Ommaney Bay Burning
She is not listing it’s just burning. We can see the hot metal running off the ship now, you can tell how hot the fire is.
About 2 hours later a plane dived into one of our Tin Cans and we can see it burning in the distance. It looks like it is about 5 miles away.
They just shot down another plane and it is burning on the beach.
Stayed on my gun all night again.
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