Photographers Mate remembers blast in Yorktown photo lab and divine intervention.
They say there are no atheists in fox holes. There also aren't many huddled on destroyer decks after being rescued from oil-slick water during naval battles.
Escondido California resident Stanford Linzey should know. He was the one leading the prayer group aboard the USS Balch, the destroyer he climbed aboard after he and other shipmates had to abandon the USS Yorktown CV 5 during the Battle of Midway, June 7, 1942.
"I remember that when I was hoisted aboard there, one of the guys said, 'Here's the deacon!'" Linzey said. "Five or six of us walked to the stern side and had an open-air meeting, and nobody was embarrassed."
Linzey was a 20-year-old sailor serving as a Yorktown telephone talker, relaying messages from repair parties. Before enlisting in January 1939, the most excitement the Houston native had seen was becoming the champion clarinet player in Texas for 1936.
But Linzey was prouder of something else. He was a Christian and the chaplain's assistant. He eventually would become a chaplain himself, after leaving the Navy to attend missionary school. He later re-enlisted, to serve 20 more years, retiring in 1974 as a captain.
Fifty-nine years after the sinking of the USS Yorktown, Linzey recalls the Battle of Midway and his years leading up to joining the Navy in the book, "God Was At Midway" ($14.95, Black Forest Press).
Linzey acknowledges that the story of Midway has been told in many books and films before him, but as a chaplain, he saw a need to look at the spiritual issues.
"So many things happened that, had we been caught, that would have been the end," Linzey said. "That's why I named it 'God Was At Midway.'"
Before the battle of Midway, a turning point in the war, Japan had planned a ribbon perimeter of ships stretching from Alaska to Australia, but the Americans had broken the Japanese code and learned about their battle plans.
The Japanese still outnumbered the Americans at Midway, however, with 185 Japanese ships and only 33 American.
The element of surprise would have been lost if Japanese scout planes had flown one additional formation, which they did not because one plane was late. Linzey believes it was divine intervention.
The Yorktown's presence at Midway itself was somewhat miraculous. Just a month early, the ship had fought in the Battle of the Coral Sea, called the first naval fight where the ships were not in sight of one another.
The Yorktown was hit with an armour-piercing shell that punctured five decks before exploding, killing 56 men.
"In a split second, I could be in eternity," Linzey wrote about the thoughts going through his mind during the battle. "How would that feel? Where is eternity? Is it going to happen? How do I know? When? What would it be like to meet God?"
Linzey wasn't to find out that day. "God was merciful," he wrote.
The USS Lexington was not as fortunate. Two torpedoes and two bomb hits set the ship ablaze, forcing the crew to abandon ship. An American ship later sunk the Lexington with torpedoes because it was burning out of control.
Linzey later befriended Lexington photographer Hank Johnson, who told him about his own miraculous story. Johnson said he had been injured by a blast while in his photo lab. He had almost given up, but he found the strength to abandon ship with the rest of the crew.
Johnson later found out that around the time of the attack, his sister in Norfolk, Va., had begun a five-hour prayer. She didn't stop until she felt a "release of the spirit," or a feeling that her prayer had been answered, around the time her brother was rescued.
The Yorktown limped back to Pearl Harbor, where Capt. Elliot Buckmaster requested a six-month overhaul for his ship. Admiral Chester Nimitz allowed only 72 hours, because the ship was needed for Midway.
With their code broken, the Japanese navy had sailed into a trap. Within six minutes, three of the four aircraft carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor were sunk. By the end of the day, the Hiriu, the final aircraft carrier, also was sunk, but not before attacking the Yorktown.
"As I lay on the third deck at my station, it felt as if a great arm had lifted the ship out of the sea, shaken it, and dropped it back again," Linzey wrote about a torpedo strike. "On the drop, seawater flooded into the gaping holes in the hull, and we took a list to the portside of 27 degrees."
The crew was told to strip to their skivvies and abandon ship. Linzey and others slid into the ocean on lines strung from the high side of the listing ship. Destroyers slowly pulled up to them, and about 2,000 men were rescued.
The USS Balch transferred the men to the USS Portland, where Linzey formed a Bible group. Years later, when Linzey was serving in the El Cajon church he started, he met a woman who said her son had been killed in the war, but she would see him in heaven because before his death he had accepted Jesus after joining a Bible group. Her son was stationed on the Portland.
On Sunday, Linzey leaves for Hawaii. He has been invited to sign copies of his book at the USS Arizona Memorial on Memorial Day.