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small band from the damage control of¤ce. Together, they picked their way carefully through the darkness, stumbling over torn metal and debris and guided only by the feel of fresh air on their faces. They eventually arrived in the aerology of¤ce. By that time the aerology of¤ce was empty. After trying to bring some order to the of¤ce’s chaos following the initial blasts, Aerographer Mahood had given up and headed topside. Passing through the vacant of¤ce, Carley tripped. In the darkness, the chaplain tripped over an object that felt like a life jacket. When he reached down he was happy to discover it was indeed a life jacket. He slipped it on. The delay separated him from Carroll, Rowe, and the others, though, and he made his own way up onto the carrier’s high side walkway. Meanwhile, Carroll’s group reached the base of the ship’s elevator shaft. The shaft, like much of the hangar and ®ight decks, was on ¤re, but Carroll and Charters found Boatswain Roy W. Hunt ¤ghting the blaze. He had a portable CO2¤re extinguisher in his hands. With sure, quick blasts of white foam, Hunt was trying to beat back the ®ames. Three empty extinguishers lay at his feet, evidence of the losing battle he had been waging. “Come on, Boats,” Carroll said to Hunt. “Get the hell outta here.”11 Hunt ignored his superior of¤cer and kept blasting at the ®ames. The other men in the party glanced nervously at Carroll, curious to see how the lieutenant commander would react to this insubordination. For the¤rst time, with the light of the burning shaft providing illumination, Charters and the others noticed that Carroll was covered in blood. The initial blasts had peppered him with shrapnel, and he was bleeding heavily from wounds to his face and chest. Rowe asked Carroll if he wanted him to dress his wounds, but Carroll waved the doctor off. Instead , he led the group of men topside, coming out on the walkway around the ®ight deck. Elsewhere aboard the mangled carrier, other men struggled to ¤nd ways topside and out of the smoky interior. Seaman Second Class Lester E. Bush, one of the ship’s ¤remen, scaled a superheated steam pipe rather than wait to force his way up an overcrowded ladder. The scalding pipe seared both of his hands, but, ignoring the pain, he made it up to the®ight deck. Seaman James Honold, having just ¤nished handing out Twenty-Three Minutes and Counting / 137 the morning’s parachutes, had just laid his head down on a spare chute’s pack to catch a quick catnap when the torpedo hit. The ensuing explosion knocked him unconscious. Fireman James King had been at his general quarters station in the degaussing room at the time of Tabata’s attack. At that station, he would sit, headphones in place, awaiting a call to ®ip the switches that would change the ship’s polarity from positive to negative. In theory, such a switch would foil any magnetic mines the carrier might stumble across. The torpedo blast and secondary explosions knocked King to the ®oor, and the degaussing equipment tumbled down on top of him. He extricated himself from the jumble of equipment and staggered out into the passageway. It was clear to him that the degaussing station had suddenly become irrelevant. He started moving forward through the ship, passing through the main galley. As he did so, King had to pick his way over dozens of frozen turkeys which the cooks had taken out of the freezers to thaw for the next day’s Thanksgiving meal. King could only hope that there was another such meal in his future. He soon joined several other sailors moving through the carrier as they searched for a way topside. The group came to a closed and tightly dogged hatch blocking their way further through the passageway. The hatch’s dog pipe was missing, though, and the sailors came to a halt, simply staring at the closed hatch in numb frustration. King wasn’t going to accept defeat so readily, well aware that thousands of gallons of aviation fuel rested mere feet below them. He pushed his way to the hatch, grasped it with both hands, and, with a surge of adrenaline, spun the wheel. The hatch swung open, and King led the group onward. Moments later, they emerged on the ®ight deck. Seaman Leonard Bohm...

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