The Yorktown went
"all the way to the Moon"
all because of the hard working Snipes,
down in the hole


By Dale Potts, Captain USNR (ret.)
Ensign and Lt. jg on USS Yorktown

The USS Yorktown was one of the "Fast Carriers" that won the war in the Pacific. 
Here are the heroes who
kept her FAST.

It is a great honor to join the US Navy.  I am especially impressed by the WWII vets who survived direct fire.  All Yorktown vets have served their country well but I am particularly impressed by the Yorktown sailors who had the hardest and least appreciated job of all, working in the boiler room.  Bernard Schmitz was a Watertender Third Class, which today would be an E-5 or First Class Petty Officer.  He and his fellow engine room men worked daily in the bowels of the ship, below the water line, in 100 plus degree temperatures.  After one battle where the Yorktown was the target of Japanese planes and Captain Jocko ordered "full speed ahead" for several hours, the working space of the snipes reached and stayed at 135 degrees.  But they stayed at their stations and did their duty to keep the Yorktown moving and moving fast.

 

These boilers had six burners each that were injected into the fire chamber as needed to generate 600 lbs of steam pressure. Each had super heaters attached that boosted the pressure up to 900 lbs. There were 2 working shifts of 4 hours on and 8 hours off, a total of 21 men per fire room.  They came back from each shift, drenched with sweat with a layer of soot and grimy dirt over their hair and clothes.  Most everyone they came in contact with avoided them until they could get cleaned up.  There was very little shore rotation for the "firemen" at that time. They probably had the longest durations aboard, heard about some enlisted guys who served six - eight years consecutively on the Yorktown. 

  As the battles raged all around them, as Kamikaze pilots attempted to sink the Yorktown, the "snipes" stayed at their duty stations and kept giving the Captain "full speed ahead".  Says Harry C. Perkins, "We began by bombing the island. We were under attack by them as well. I learned early that when the 5-inch guns went off it meant that the planes that were coming in for an attack on us were quite a distance from us. Then when the 40s started firing, I soon learned that they were getting pretty close. But when I heard the 20s going off, I knew that they [the enemy] were on top of us. As I was either in the fire room or just above the fire room, I had to rely on sounds that would tell me to brace for a hit. This was our routine."

As the Yorktown supported the island invasions, the Captain permitted the engineering division personnel to watch from the flight deck.  This was welcomed by the men down in the hole because they had so little opportunity to see the Sun.

The Yorktown has four boiler rooms, each containing two boilers.  Bernard Schmitz may be the first person to enter the engine room after the Yorktown was towed to Charleston harbor.  He examined the logs and estimated that "The Fighting Lady" has traveled over 200,000 miles from 1943 to 1970. That is close to the distance Apollo 8 traveled to reach the moon!  This great distance was traveled in such a short time even with the Yorktown's decommissioning between World War Two and the Korean War.

Schmitz says that the Yorktown required 1,000 gallons of fuel to reach full speed.  By his estimate the Yorktown has consumed 3.4 million gallons of black oil.

 

Jack BT3 B-Div 65-69
When you go in to the boiler room you just know you've reached HELL and there is no way out, the job is so damn dirty and hot all the time even in the winter. The only time it wasn't hot is when we were in Korea after the USS Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans,we wore jackets in the boiler room with both boilers lit off, go figure? You are together 24-7 with some of the people that you don't like sometimes, but than you find out that those are the only ones that you can count on when the chips are down.

You learn to really admire these guys as you grow up with them. You sleep in the same place, you work in the same place, you eat in the same place and endure the same pressures of the hot damn hole all the time, that they just become a part of you.

I hated that job but I would not replace any one day of it, I love my brothers very much even to this day and I'd still give my life for anyone of them if I had to. All those guys made me grow up with a feeling of belonging to something I never had even with my own blood family, we all learned to think as one and live as one and if anyone hurt anyone of us there was hell to pay from all the rest.

I don't know if that explains it for you but that is the best I can do , you'd of had to live it to know where I'm coming from. I wish I had stayed in the US Navy, I've missed those times and all my brothers, and I've reconnected with 7 of them and I'll keep looking for the rest til I'm gone.

says Willie:

There are many ways to die on an aircraft carrier in war or peace. I have often thought of how it would be if one of the 650 lb steam lines ruptured in those confined spaces. I don't think I would ever have peace of mind down there, no more than I would in the crew of an ammunition ship.
Believe me when I say men down below were in my thoughts when we were under attack.
No one can say for sure how many torpedoes were aimed at Yorktown or when but I saw a torpedo with Yorktown written all over it. My name was wasn't there but I could see the names of all you guys down below decks.
All of the mothers, wives and daughters back home must have been praying and I had the unique privilege of seeing prayers answered because only a miracle saved you people.
I never told the snipes how close they came to dying that day, maybe they already knew.

Snipes A Special breed
 
Through the life of the Yorktown a lot of things changed on the ship, with the exception of the engine rooms and fire rooms. These areas are the same today as they were when the ship slid down the slip for the first time in Newport News on April 4, 1943.


When we operated off of Vietnam for 60 - 90 days at a pop, I had plenty of exposure to what the fire rooms were like simply because on occasion I would have to go into them to fix MC units, gauges, sound power equipment, etc. When this happened I'd come out of those firerooms filthy dirty, my uniform was always completely drenched in sweat and I always wondered how BT's could stand it down there. I could at least escape after fixing what ever needed fixing.

I've never experienced the freshness of air conditioning like being down in a fire room on the Yorktown and finally crawling a ladder to escape it. It was very difficult to get work done in the fire rooms - at least for me. Sweat pouring off my brow, steam every where, noisy, in some cases dark (depending where the equipment was located in the fire room). I just could never get a grip on how anyone could stay down there and work continued 24/7 at sea.
 

I can really relate to the rush Boiler Tender Petty Officer 3rd Class Jack describes in getting the ship up to full speed. I've been in fire rooms and engine rooms on the Lady when the "Ole Man" rang up full throttle. It's one thing to see the sea rush by when you're topside; it was quite another to see the BT's and Machinist Mate's bring the Lady to life by getting every ounce of energy out of those old boilers, generators and engines. To make matters even more interesting, when BT's/MM's demanded that the 20/25 year old equipment make her look like a thoroughbred on the outside, she sometimes had a tendency to kick back like a mule on the inside.

 

Say Jack:

That time you are talking about was probably the time General Stillwell went down in the Pacific and we hit 32 knots trying to get to the location (sadly we didn't locate him), a good AMERICAN HERO lost . I remember those Boilers were panting like crazy trying to keep up the steam pressure without going over and blowing. The Smoke watch told us the OL LADY was kicking a 6 to 8 foot rooster tail out the Fantail. I couldn't tell you though, I was too busy on the burners to do anything but pay attention to business. The adrenalin is pretty high when you are full bore and it is on your head to keep the pressure in those Boilers steady at 600psi in the saturated side and 850psi on the super heated side, one mistake and you are in deep shit . DAMN THAT WAS QUITE A RUSH . Kinda like drag racing if ya know what I mean.

Says Dean:

All members of the Engineering Department were snipes. MM's, BT's, EM's and IC's. The rating I was (IC) was a red headed step child of the E division. It was really odd in that electrician mates and IC'men were located in the same bearthing compartment, but rarely had anything to do with each other. It was a very clannish environment. EM's worked and ran around with EM's and IC's worked and ran around with IC's. That said, I think all E division Chiefs were pretty close.


IC's were snipes but we were all over the ship, from bottom to top. Below deck our main meeting/work area was Central Station, located right in front of the Fire Control Station very low in the ship and on center line forward. Central Station was about five decks below the deck/location where the gedunk and ship store is at. Central Station was the location of the main ship's gyro - (there was another similar gyro back aft about five decks down from where the aft scullery was in the aft galley). Central Station was surrounded by various storage compartments, including ammunition storage. Next to Central Station was the Telephone Room which we ran and operated. Besides Central Station and the Telephone Room, IC's had shops all over the ship. There was an MC shop located right next to the ship's quarter deck, a sound powered shop located on the starboard side between the hanger deck and the flight deck, and the PLAT room on the port side just below the flight deck, that was home for all of the camera systems and Fresnel lens equipment.



Besides these shops, IC equipment was literally every where on the ship. There was not a space on the Yorktown that didn't have some form or fashion of IC equipment. Because of this we scoured the ship every day, into every nook and cranny you could think of to repair equipment, etc.


Interestingly, we had one guy who loved to work in the heat and sweat of the fire rooms and engine rooms and hardly ever did go topside, like most BT's and MM's who worked there. The exception was that he always volunteered to crawl out on the highest point on the mast of the ship to remove and replace the windspeed and wind direction transmitters (they looked something like weather vanes you would see on a barn). The rest of us were scared to death to crawl out on those masts.


I loved being a snipe!! During my tenure on the Yorktown we carried the big red E with hashmarks on our uniform signifying we were the best in the fleet at what we did. All of us snipes were really proud of that red E. We had a mustang Commander as an Engineering Officer (Cmdr. Fogg) who ran a really tight department, with really good Division Officers and great Chiefs.

 

Archie:


What I noticed about "The Black Gang" and "Snipes" was how pale they were. Many times the poor guys were trying to get some sun on the flight deck and were always getting run off.  Did anyone ever hear of Fleenor the mole. Supposedly he realized one day he hadn't been above the third deck for two weeks and decided to try for a record. I believe he stayed below over four months until the brass found out and ordered him topside. Whitest white man anybody ever saw.

photos of snipes by PH2 Daniel A. Bernath- USS Kearsarge 67 to 68- USS Yorktown 68 to 70 

 

James Watzek ABH3 65-67 Rep 8
Airdales thank the Snipes~turning in to the wind
Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:14am
It was always nice to turn into the wind and know the guys in the boiler rooms would give us all the wind we would need. I can remember the first time the lady with me on her got up to 30+ knots it felt like she was going to vibrate apart, she put out a wake and left a trail of white water behind her. Gave a guy goose bumps.

I can imagine how guy in the engine room felt.

Daniel Alan Bernath Petty Officer 2nd Class 1968-1970 says;

During the Cold War we played "chicken" with the Soviet Navy day and night.  I can't remember many times when we weren't being tailed by a Russian cruiser or destroyer.  The set up was thusly; the USS Yorktown, our destroyer escort behind us and behind her a respectful distance-the Russian Cruiser or Destroyer.

I was on the fantail when we were about to start flight operations just "shooting the shit" with the fantail watch when he told me, "we're going start flight operations now...watch this Dan."

Suddenly, the ole USS Yorktown sprang to life like a teenaged sprinter!  The helmsman turned her to a hard right as the Yorktown shot ahead.  The US Navy destroyer slowed down or stopped so the Russian had to stop or slow down behind her.  One of our other destroyers on our port or starboard side slide behind us at high speed.

bullet So what happened was the Yorktown shot ahead, with the full steam supplied by the boiler tenders. 
bullet Our tailing US Navy destroyer slowed down or stopped and doing a tighter turn to starboard than the Yorktown,
bullet The Russian was stopped- cut off like a car in city traffic by a US Navy destroyer,
bullet Another US Navy destroyer hit full speed and slide in right behind us and took over as our stern guard for our flight operations,
bullet and we got to conduct our flight operations in peace and without the viewing eye of the Russians. 

Apparently this was just routine procedure for the US Navy being tailed by the Russian Navy but it gave me goose bumps to see the destroyers, the helm and the boiler tenders all working together to trip the Russian Bear.  What gave me such a kick was to see that the Russians couldn't do anything about it but curse that they had been "had" again!

One other thing; the old USS Yorktown was over 25 years old when I was aboard her but I avoided the fantail most of the time.  The ship was moving so fast and rocking bow to stern that when the stern dipped I felt slightly airborne (the same feeling you get when you are on a fast dropping elevator).  I didn't like the feeling of being "airborne"  so close to the churning white water a few feet away on the fantail so I avoided going there as much as I could. 

A tribute to the Snipes who kept the Essex Class "fast carrier" Yorktown stay fast till her retirement day!

 

Snipe Mischief
Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:03pm
 

I remember when we went under the San Francisco bridge one time we waited til the Smoke watch told us the bridge was about mid-ships, than we shoved a bar of zinc in the firebox and sent green smoke up just as the stacks hit the bridge.

Man the whole fireroom got restricted for doing that, the Captain was mad as hell (but it was pretty cool anyway.)

 

Harry C. Perkins was a snipe on the Yorktown.  

He was there at the commissioning, right through to the end of the war.

"We would be at sea for several months before returning to Hawaii, our home base for more supplies and etc. I will never forget the one time after we were at sea for one hundred days without seeing any land at all. We came into the harbor and those of us that were not on duty went topside to get fresh air and to wave at the Hawaiian girls on the dock to greet us. The first one I laid eyes on was a girl with a hula skirt on, no teeth in her head grinning from ear to ear, and topped the scale at about 300 lbs., and to me looked as good as Marylyn Monroe.

       While taking on supplies we heard the Quartermaster announce the need for a working detail to report to the quarterdeck to load provisions. We would go up topside to watch this process. When we saw something in the cases that we thought we would like, we would just step in line, retrieve a case or two and hand them out to our buddies, take them to the fire room. We would dump the can goods into the bilge so we would always have a midnight snack while on duty.

Yorktown Sailors treated like Hawaiian Royalty, but it doesn't last.

       I had a buddy on board who was from Long Island, New York. His name is Herbert F. Goldsmith. We worked together in the fire room and got to be pretty good friends. Whenever we had an opportunity to hit the beach on liberty, we usually went together to look for girls and hit the bars. One particular day we went on the beach to hit the bars on the strip in Waikiki. After a few drinks we decided we would travel up north to Wahewa. This was a little town up in the fountain area above the pineapple plantations. This little town was far enough away from the Naval station that we were about the only servicemen in this small community. This gave us an advantage of being special and we were treated like royalty. However, this royalty stuff lasted only until when I fell asleep on a table and they kicked us out.

Yorktown Snipes get an extra unauthorized shower:

I took advantage of the dry-dock period to build a shower in back of the boiler so we could take a shower when we wanted to. Water was sometimes scarce and rationed because the "solo shell" could not produce enough water for everyone to take a shower at the same time. We perspired a lot in the fire rooms and needed to shower more often than the average duck. So I bummed some copper tubing from some dockworkers, picked up a showerhead from the machine shop, and tapped into where the water went into the water fountain. I had to string the tubing in back of the boiler. I placed a couple boards over the grates, and bingo, there was our shower. Believe me, it came in handy. I would love to go aboard the ship as it is moored at Charleston, South Carolina, to see if it was still rigged up, but I have not had the chance.

      

The battle to take Guam;

We finally found the Japanese fleet and engaged them into one of the greatest sea Japanese planebattles of all time. It was during this time that the Kamikaze pilots became a factor. They felt very desperate. These pilots were trained to give their lives for their emperor and their flag, the Rising Sun. I think this was the scariest part of the war to me, because there wasn't much you could do to stop them from their mission. The only way to stop them was to shoot them down before they could set their sights on us - their target. Once they had their sights on your ship and they started their dive, only a direct hit would stop them.

       Although we were at general quarters [all hands at Battle Stations], I had just gotten out of the bunk from a rest shift. I had just gone down to the fire room when we were hit by a Kamikaze plane. It exploded right next to the compartment that I just vacated, tearing a hole in the side of the ship. This was about a 10' X 30' hole. Almost every bunk, including the one that I had been in was shot up with shrapnel.

I was very thankful that I had to go on duty when I did."

       

Where is he now?  Carl S. Perkins as of March 2001

"I will be 73 years of age in Dec. of this year. Married and have 6 wonderful children. My children are all married and scattered over these United states. I'm now retired from the CSX Railroad, after serving 40 years with the same company.  I now have fourteen grandchildren and five great grandchildren. The part that I played in this war and the time spent of my life was well worth it to help make a better place in this world for all our families."

Says Willie of the WW2 Yorktown-visiting Snipe Country after the Yorktown becomes a museum

We were discouraged from visiting friends in other parts of the ship where we had no business especially when they were on watch or when we were so called “battle cruising.” Don’t get caught on the wrong side of the water tight integrity doors when they’re shut following the GQ alarm.
Pappy Harshman the flight deck boss was always running off the poor snipes and others some of whom never saw a plane land or take off our deck. “Stand by to start engines” or “stand by to land aircraft” was always followed by “spectators clear the flight deck” That meant the gallery deck as well and just about any place they could catch a glimpse of activities.
I always thought the snipes were entitled to submarine pay. If we ever took a fish in one of those spaces everybody down there was gone. I saw the nose of a Jap torpedo less than a hundred feet from our ship and watched it fly over the flight deck still attached to the plane. I’ve often said I saw prayers answered because I know all those snipes loved one were praying for their safety all the time and that boys and girls, was a miracle. Torpedo in a magazine, don’t even think about it.
Nobody had a better view of the flight deck and sea around us than we did up on mt five quad 40 but there were many places I never saw and still haven’t to this day. We talked often to “control” on the phones but was never sure where control was.
I was never in an engine room and only one time briefly in a boiler room and but at a reunion a few years ago decided it was time.
I followed the arrows down below and what I saw looked much like what I had worked with for years on an oil refinery. I saw pumps, turbines, reduction gears and steam generating facilities all jammed tight in cramped spaces. I wondered how they ever removed the rotors from the turbines without cutting through several decks. When I asked one of the snipes how it was done, he didn’t know, “we never had it to do”
I was alone down there looking at what must have been the instrument panel and control station when I could swear I heard water lapping against the hull and realized if there was a power failure it would be total darkness and probably no way I could grope my way to a ladder.
Lesson learned and advice to give, don’t go down in the engine or boiler rooms without at least a pen light. That’s exactly what I did children, I picked up one for a buck fifty at a drug store and went back for a closer look the next day.
Was it the hooligans or boy scouts whose motto was “Be Prepared”

 

       

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