Nov. 29, 1944

MyDarling:

Air Defense again this morning and two more Jap planes were shot down. We didn’t get to shoot at these either, too far away.

Dec. 25, 1944

My Darling:

Went on liberty at Manus and played ball, also got beat 7 – 2. Sure had a lot of fun. Came back to the ship in the evening and saw a good happy hour and a movie.
Gee Honey, I miss you so much. I love you so very much dear.

Jan. 1, 1945

Hi Honey:

Left Manus, guess we are going to make an invasion some place.

There are 17 C.V.G’s. with us and 3 Battleships, fifteen Destroyers and four cruisers. Nice way to start out the New Year.

I am going to start out the New Year by loving you twice as much. I am going to wait until we get someplace and continue.

Escort carriers were smaller and more numerous versions of the big aircraft carriers.

“CVG” is in reference to carrier battle groups.  Aircraft carriers had superseded battleships as the premier naval power during WW2.  During the battle of Luzon, there were 6 escort carrier, not 17.

Jan. 3, 1945

Darling Kay:

We have arrived back to Pogie Junction (Philippines) and are going to pick up some more ships and make an invasion on Luzon. They claim there will be twice as many men and material in this invasion. There are so many different kinds of ships with us now it is hard to count them all. We are going to need them too.

One plane crashed about 100 yards in front of a cruiser.

PBY CATALINA AMPHIBIAN FLYING BOATS over the U.S. invasion fleet in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon

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.