World War II Remembered

My Accident-Prone Navy

94 Iwas awakened from a deep sleep by a very loud screaming sound of metal tearing metal, and found that I had been thrown from my army cot onto the deck. The ship had given a tremendous lurch from port to starboard, but there was no sound of an explosion—only the shouts of men out on deck. I had been sleeping in my skivvies, and I quickly pulled on my pants, not bothering with shirt or shoes. I ran out onto the deck looking towards the stern, which, as I gazed, appeared to be moving to my right, detaching itself from the forward part of the ship. The call was shouted out, “Abandon Ship!” My ship was the USS Perkins DD 377, a Mahan class destroyer built in the 1930s. I had come aboard three days before at Milne Bay, a large naval installation at the eastern end of New Guinea—a very green ensign in the Navy Supply Corps. After graduating from Princeton in June 1942, I immediately applied for a commission as a deck officer in the Navy. Much to my disappointment, I was rejected for colorblindness —a condition I had never suspected I had. After being rejected by My Accident-Prone Navy • Samuel Doak U.S. Navy My Accident-Prone Navy: Samuel Doak 95 Army and Marine Corps officer training programs for the same reason, I had learned how to cheat on the colorblindness test. Thus I passed it successfully on the examination for the Naval Supply Corps, to which I applied when I learned I would be able go to sea. I was sent to the Harvard Business School for four months of training as a Supply and Disbursing Officer and received a most effective training that proved invaluable later. I had applied for duty on a destroyer and got my wish, being assigned to Destroyers Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, where I waited six weeks before assignment to the USS Perkins. At that time, there was no transportation directly to the South Pacific from Pearl Harbor, so I had to hitch rides on a cruiser, two aircraft , and a landing ship dry dock before ending up in Milne Bay, where the Perkins was anchored. Milne Bay was a large roadstead filled with what looked like hundreds of ships. I was taken by a small landing craft to the Perkins, and as we approached the ship, a slightly pudgy young officer yelled out, “Is that you, Sammy?” He was the Supply Officer and had been waiting anxiously for my arrival, having received a copy of my orders several months earlier. When reporting to the Captain, I learned that the ship was to sail in three days to perform a shore bombardment at the village of Finchhofen, held by the Japanese on the north coast of New Guinea. Moreover, I was going to have to move fast to transfer all the stores, cash, and accounts, if my predecessor was to be detached and leave the ship before we sailed, which he was most anxious to do. Consequently, the next two days were a whirlwind of activity to effect the transfer. I was able to bid my predecessor goodbye on the second night, and we sailed the next morning. It was that night that I heard the cry to abandon ship. The Mae West My first thought was my life preserver, which I had not had time to try on. It was an Australian “Mae West,” inflated by mouth through a rubber hose in the front of the pouch. In my haste, I mistakenly assumed that the ties went under my arms instead of around the neck and waist as they were designed to do. As a result, the “breast” of the life preserver floated up over my face, providing no buoyancy whatsoever. My second thought was the payroll record book. I had been taught in training that, if your ship sinks, you might as well go down with it if 96 World War II Remembered you do not recover the payroll, since it would take months of work to reconstruct it. My office was not far from the compartment where I was sleeping, and I felt my way to it, passing men jumping over the side, and grabbed the payroll, a large book weighted with steel plates so it would sink and not fall into the hands of the enemy. Of course I did...