A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy (20 page)

Sadly, fate would deny her the victorious entry of the U.S. fleet into Tokyo Bay for the Japanese surrender. Struck by a kamikaze off the coast of Japan late in the war, she had sustained serious damage and was undergoing repairs at Puget Sound Navy Yard when the war ended.

Alvin Kernan also survived the war, though he tempted fate by becoming a gunner in the rear seat of a torpedo bomber. He took part in the first night-fighter action in history and was awarded the Navy Cross. After the war, he learned that Big E was slated to be scrapped and that a campaign had been launched to raise enough money to save her as a museum ship. “I thought about it but decided not to contribute because I couldn't bear to think of her sitting around in some backwater, being exploited in unworthy ways, invaded by hordes of tourists with no sense of her greatness. Better by far, I thought, to leave her to memory of those who had served on her when she was fully alive, vibrating under full steam at thirty-two knots, the aircraft turning up, guns firing, heeling over so sharply that the hangar deck took on water to avoid the bombs.” Others must have agreed with Kernan.
Enterprise VII
made her rendezvous with the cutter's torch early in 1959. No longer pulsing with the life of a crew, she gave up the ghost and became, once again, the piles of steel and Douglas fir from which she had been built.

But in a gigantic graving dock at Newport News, Virginia, the spirit of the Big E was being revived as
Enterprise VIII
began to take shape. In 1961, a commissioning ceremony bestowed the now-hallowed name of
Enterprise
on the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. In the decades to follow, this great ship would carry on the “Big E” tradition in the confrontation with the Soviet Navy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, six
combat deployments to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, the protection of Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf and launching of strikes against Iranian naval units in 1988, support for the NATO intervention in Bosnia, enforcement of the no-fly zones over Iraq after the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and the attack on al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan in the early days of the War on Terrorism. She still steams today.

The U.S. Navy's tradition of carrying on the names of some of its ships has resulted in the name
Enterprise
being linked to much of the nation's history, so much so that the name has carried over into American popular culture. When Gene Roddenberry conceived the highly successful television program
Star Trek,
he chose the name
Enterprise
for the starship that would travel “where no man has gone before.” The first space shuttle in the NASA space program, several racing yachts, and one of the Goodyear blimps have all been named
Enterprise.

There is a story—probably apocryphal—that tells of a Soviet agent overhearing a conversation between two American Sailors during the Cold War, then reporting back to Moscow that the U.S. Navy had developed a new defense system for its aircraft carriers that protected them from incoming missiles. As the story goes, the agent had heard the Americans discussing the “
Enterprise
's protective shields.” Of course, the Sailors were referring to television's starship
Enterprise,
not the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier!

Other ship names—for example,
Wasp, Independence, Constellation, The Sullivans, Bonhomme Richard,
and
Intrepid,
some of which feature in this heritage story—have also appeared and reappeared at critical moments in our past. But sometimes—as with the fourth, fifth, and sixth
Enterprise
s—the roles of these ships do not catch the public's fancy, nor do they earn much ink in the history books. But with each new incarnation, whether a sailing sloop with an assortment of cannons or a nuclear-powered submarine with ballistic missiles capable of striking virtually anywhere in the world, the mission remains the same: stand ready to protect the nation, by mere presence or by force of arms. It is a legacy that has been handed down from ship to ship, Sailor to Sailor, for more than two centuries, and it will likely continue for centuries to come.

On 31 May 2002, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England directed that until the War on Terrorism is won, a more symbolic flag would replace the Union Jack. A red-and-white-striped flag bearing a rattlesnake and the words “Don't Tread on Me” now flies from the jackstaff of every Navy ship in port. In the words of Secretary England, “The temporary substitution of this Jack represents an historic reminder of the nation's and Navy's origin and [its] will to persevere and triumph.”

That flag is an appropriate symbol for the struggle at hand, warning those who would challenge the American ideal and attempt to curtail our liberty that such actions bear consequences similar to those encountered should one step on a rattlesnake.

That flag is also appropriate because of the widespread belief that the same one had been flown by some ships of the fledgling Continental Navy when it first stood up to the might of Great Britain in the American Revolution.

Throughout its history, the U.S. Navy has often faced formidable odds, seemingly down and out at first, but coming back with the ferocity of a rattlesnake strike to ultimately prevail, proving that one should think twice before treading on a rattlesnake or before stepping on the liberty of America.

Doris—“Dorie” to his shipmates—Miller had enlisted in the Navy to earn money for his family. The year was 1939, and opportunities were limited for African-Americans (“Negroes” in those days). He became a mess attendant third class, serving in USS
Pyro,
an ammunition ship, and later transferring to the battleship USS
West Virginia
—“Weevee” to her crew—at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

A big man who had played fullback on his high school football team in Waco, Texas, Miller also earned the title of heavyweight boxing champion in
West Virginia.
Because of his obvious physical strength, he was assigned as an ammunition handler in the antiaircraft battery magazine amidships for his battle station.

On the morning of 7 December 1941, Miller crawled out of his rack at 0600 to grab some early breakfast and then attend to his morning duties. Normally, those duties included waking Ensign Edmond Jacoby, but today was Sunday, and the ensign was sleeping in, so Miller went to the junior officer's wardroom where he had been assigned as a mess attendant. It was quiet in the wardroom—just two officers had shown up for breakfast—so Miller began collecting laundry. He had been sorting among the piles of uniforms for more than an hour when, to his surprise, general quarters was sounded. General quarters drills were usually conducted during weekdays or on an occasional Saturday, but he could not remember ever having one in port on a Sunday.

As he headed along the long passageway leading to his magazine battle station, Miller felt the ship shudder violently and heard men shouting that the Japanese were attacking. The reality hit him like a left hook when he arrived at his battle station to find that it had been destroyed by a torpedo hit. He could feel the ship beginning to list as she took on water. Unsure of where to go or what to do, he was relieved when a chief petty officer told him to carry wounded men to the nearest battle-dressing station. Hefting wounded shipmates onto his broad shoulders, Miller made several trips, wading through water and slipping on oil as he struggled “uphill” along the sloping deck, until Lieutenant Commander Doir Johnson ordered Miller to follow him to the bridge.

The two men dashed up the steep ladders leading to Weevee's towering bridge. When they stepped out into daylight for the first time, Miller saw Ensign Jacoby, now fully awake, and a number of other officers trying desperately to establish some kind of order in the midst of all the confusion. Miller wondered where the captain was.

Peering out through one of the shattered bridge windows, he saw an unbelievable scene of great chaos and devastation. Japanese aircraft swooped about like a flock of angry birds, darting among the towering pillars of smoke that rose from the decks of stricken ships into the pristine blue of the Hawaiian sky. The harbor water was striped with the wakes of inbound torpedoes and cluttered with struggling Sailors. He saw other men lolling in the water who would struggle no more. Ugly clogs of black oil floated among the huge ships in Battleship Row, some of it burning, some of it waiting to absorb those who had no choice but dive into it as raging fires engulfed their ships. He stared, momentarily mesmerized, as USS
Oklahoma
—moored directly ahead—listed farther and farther to port until, to his horror, she turned turtle, her glistening, barnacle-encrusted hull suddenly facing the sky. He wondered how many men were now trapped inside the inverted ship.

Looking away from the awful sight, Miller saw his captain and realized why he had not taken charge. Captain Mervyn Bennion was lying across the sill of the signal bridge door on the starboard side. He had been cut down by a jagged piece of shrapnel from an exploding bomb on nearby
Tennessee,
his abdomen badly torn. It seemed apparent he was not going to survive. Ensign Victor Delano was kneeling near the captain, trying to ease his pain by holding a can of ether to Bennion's nose, hoping to make him pass out. Despite his pain and the ether, the captain kept asking how the battle was going, what was the status of his ship? Delano lied to his captain, knowing the truth would merely add to the dying man's misery.

USS
West Virginia
(“Weevee”) and USS
Tennessee
after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

Weevee too was perilously close to death. Like
Oklahoma,
she had been listing heavily to port and might well have suffered the same fate had not the senior gunnery officer, Lieutenant Claude Ricketts, gone to damage control central and taken it upon himself to counter-flood. This caused the big battleship to settle into the mud of the harbor bottom, relatively upright. Ricketts was now on the bridge, and in the words of a witness, “served as a pillar of strength.”

Dorie Miller and several other men moved their captain to a safer spot behind the conning tower. Then Ensign Delano recruited Miller and two other Sailors to man two .50-caliber antiaircraft machine guns forward of the conning tower. Because Negro Sailors were always assigned as ammunition handlers, never gunners, Delano assumed the other two Sailors would do the shooting and Miller would pass them belts of ammunition. But a moment later he discovered that Miller was firing one of the guns as though he had been doing it his entire life. Whipping the gun about with great agility, he fired hundreds of rounds at the marauding Japanese planes. Miller later said: “It wasn't hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us.”

By then, most of the battleship that remained above water was engulfed in flames, and much of her hull was filled with water and oil. Captain Bennion had died, and it was apparent that little else could be done for
West Virginia.
From down in central control the word was passed to abandon ship. The encroaching fires cut off Miller, Delano, Ricketts, and the others on the bridge. Seeing their plight, a seaman from the deck below aimed a fire hose their way and managed to keep the flames away long enough for them to climb down a line that another shipmate had tossed up to them.

Before long, Miller and Weevee's other survivors had left the stricken ship, and it seemed “the old girl had breathed her last,” as a grizzled old chief said, tears cutting winding paths through the soot on his blackened face.