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then he made a quick side trip to the base hospital to track down Captain Crommelin. Finding Crommelin’s room, Daily explained to the burned captain that the crew was leaving for California but that his pay records had been given to the appropriate staff at Pearl. “Pay, thanks for everything,” Crommelin said from his hospital bed. “You did a great job.”17 With that simple praise ringing in his ears, Daily reported to Saratoga. Most of Liscome Bay’s other survivors, Beasley among them, also made it on board the carrier for the trip back to the States. The old carrier made the ¤ve-day unescorted run to San Francisco at top speed through rough weather. One night, Bergquist recalled later, the rolling ship pitched sailors from their bunks as waves broke over the®ight deck. For a man with multiple compound fractures in his left leg, it was a painful and frightening evening. Beasley spent the voyage in a makeshift collection of cots on the ship’s hangar deck. Rough weather aside, he had no complaints about his accommodations—he was happy to be back with Andrews, Goss, and Unbehagen from the signal gang. His uniform—if one could call it that—was another matter. He was still wearing his size forty undershorts and the overshoes donated by Hughes. Since the rescue, he had only managed to add a hospital gown to his ensemble. One of Saratoga’s storekeepers had located an extra pair of dungarees, but as luck would have it, they were also too large. Beasley had to use a rope to keep them up. Arriving on a night of seventy-mile-per-hour gale winds and sevenfoot waves in the bay, Saratoga was unable to moor. Instead, a seagoing tug took off Liscome Bay’s ambulatory survivors and transported them to Alameda NAS. The men on stretchers had to wait until Saratoga could moor at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in order to be lowered by yard cranes off the ®ight deck. Upon arriving at Alameda, Daily learned that the navy had convened an investigative board to examine the ship’s sinking. The board, which met initially on December 9, included representatives from the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet; the Chief of Naval Operations; the Bureaus of Aeronautics, Ships, and Ordnance; the Commander Fleet Aircraft—West Coast; and the Maritime Commission. That evening its Surviving / 203 members met with the ship’s two surviving of¤cers from Liscome Bay’s company—Lieutenant Commanders Ames and Adams. Captain Crommelin was still waylaid in the Pearl Harbor hospital recovering from his wounds. For the next two days, the board interviewed twenty-¤ve other survivors , trying to speak with someone from each section of the ship. Daily appeared on December 10. He found the assembled of¤cers, as well as the two civilians from the Maritime Commission, to have little interest in placing blame for the sinking. Instead, their attention focused on the speci¤cs of Liscome Bay’s damage, the escape of her survivors, and the manner of her sinking. It was clear to Daily that they were intent on identifying whatever engineering steps to take on Liscome Bay’s sister ships to reduce future casualties and damage in the event of similar torpedo attacks. To help understand the survivors’ descriptions of the sinking and their escapes, the board visited Wake Island, one of Liscome Bay’s sister ships, which was in port at the time. Once the survivors’ testimony was complete, the of¤cers sifted through the occasional minor contradictions as they analyzed the causes of the disaster and the conditions that had exacerbated it. Although the board did not issue its of¤cial ¤ndings until March 10, 1944, it provided an initial memorandum to the navy on December 22, 1943. “The principal conclusion reached,” the memo read, “was that the primary cause of the loss of the vessel was the mass detonation of aircraft bombs stowed in the hold . . . as a result of heavy fragment attack produced by a contact torpedo explosion in way of, or very near, this magazine.”18 The memorandum also noted that the unfortunate timing of the torpedo attack— when so many of the crew were at ®ight quarters or manning exposed antiaircraft gun positions along the ®ight deck and gallery walkways on the aft section of the ship—undoubtedly contributed to the heavy loss of life. In the meantime, the shipyards of Henry Kaiser were still building escort carriers in...

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