Knowlton Stuart experienced war from rough waters
 

By GI SMITH
TR Staff Writer

CHRIS CROOK/Times Recorder R. Knowlton Stuart holds a picture of the U.S.S Yorktown on which he served in the Pacific Theater.       The Stuart files   R. Knowlton Stuart, 83   Entered service -- August 1942; served in United States Army ROTC for two years during college prior.   Discharged -- April 1946   Rank at discharge -- Lieutenant Senior Grade   Decorations -- Presidential Unit Citation, Personal Commendation, American Theatre of Operations, Asiatic-Pacific Medal with 11 Battle Participation Stars, Philippine Liberation, Okinawa Campaign, Occupation of Japan, and four others.   Married to the former Carol Filter, now 80.

ZANESVILLE -- Knowlton Stuart had never seen the ocean before August of 1942.

Having been raised by parents Harry and Gertrude Stuart in Huntington, W.Va., he had little experience with the great wide world. After graduating from high school, Stuart attended West Virginia University, majoring in business and economics, and enrolled in the United States Army ROTC for two years during his time at college.

After his studies were complete, he knew it was time for war, so he sent his application to the Navy.

"I didn't want to go to the Army, and in August of 1942, I got my orders to report to the Navy," he said.

Starting out as an ensign, Stuart's initial training began at the Harvard Naval Training School in Cambridge, Mass., for six months. There, he learned to be a communications officer -- which included radio, signaling, coding, decoding and naval regulations.

"Then I got my orders to serve on the U.S.S. Yorktown (CV-10) carrier," he said. The 3-block-long ship replaced the first U.S.S. Yorktown, which was seriously damaged during the Battle of Midway and had to be sunk. He reported for pre-commissioning detail to the carrier in March of 1943 at Newport News, Va.

"I'd never been to the ocean, and I looked at that monster and said 'My God, is this what I'm going to be doing?' I was on that (ship) for 2 1/2 years." He was one of five officers who stayed with the ship for that long.

Because he was a member of the first crew of the ship, he's considered to be a "Plank Owner." When the deck of the ship was replaced with a poured concrete surface, he and other Plank Owners received a piece of the original wood flooring.

It took two years to build the carrier, which weighed 40,000 tons and consisted of a flight deck, seven decks below and seven decks above it. It had a 3,000-member crew and was nearly self-sustaining with doctors, dentists, cooks, maintenance and other workers.

"After training out of Norfolk, we went for a shakedown cruise to shake down the ship and to teach we men what the Navy was all about," he said. The carrier would officially be commissioned on April 15, 1943.

"We had 90 aircraft on that ship," he said. After the shakedown, the carrier and crew returned to Norfolk, departed again and went through the Panama Canal straight through to Pearl Harbor. "We were training all the way."

The first sight the crew came upon was Diamond Head, a Hawaiian volcano.

"There was still smoke coming out of the ships that were sunk (during the December 7, 1941 attack)," he said. "In fact, oil is still coming out of the (U.S.S.) Arizona. There are 2,000 men still down there."

Shortly after pulling anchor near Diamond Head, the carrier would begin its journey through 38 campaign attacks -- starting with the attack on Marcus Island on Aug. 31, 1943 and lasting through the occupation and invasion of Japan from Aug. 15 until Oct. 1, 1945 -- and seven typhoons -- which claimed many destroyer ships and numerous sailors.

"There were 170-mile per hour winds coming across the deck," he said. "During the one typhoon, I went to sleep one night with destroyers surrounding the carrier. I woke up the next morning and four of them were lost. I don't know how many hundreds of men died from that."

Unpredictable weather and nearly invisible Kamikaze suicide bombers plagued the fleet of carriers and destroyers that made up Task Force 58. That assemblage of Naval might was, as Stuart describes, "the finest military naval force in history. Never has a country had such a combat fleet." But that fleet was often the target of attacks that lasted days, weeks and sometimes months.

"During the Okinawa Campaign, two major things happened: First, the carrier (U.S.S.) Franklin -- a name that should go down in history -- had all her planes on the flight deck, loaded with bombs. One (Kamikaze pilot) dove right on the deck and one of them went down the stack. They were 200 yards off our port bow," he said.

More than 900 men died on that ship -- which was equivalent in size and crew to the Yorktown.

"We escorted it clear back to a place called Ulithi, a spot in the middle of the Pacific. We stayed under attack for at least three days getting back to that one anchorage. The Okinawa campaign was one of the worst."

During that time, the crew never knew when they would hear a warning bell beckoning each man to his battle station.

"The normal watch was for four or eight hours but when you were under attack, you never knew when you could go to sleep," he said.

After months under attack and in initiated battles, Stuart said he got punchy and was ready to return to the U.S.

"You did get used to being attacked but you were still scared when it happened. Anybody who said they weren't scared was crazy," he said.

But Stuart said the vessel was very fortunate not to have suffered the fate of many ships at sea.

"They sometimes called us the 'Lucky Y."

One of the most frightening times Stuart experienced during the war was when a Japanese pilot flew so close to the Yorktown, readying to drop a one-ton bomb on his ship, that he could see the torpedo just above his head. The skipper turned the vessel just in time to cut out of the way of the discharged bomb.

"I was numb, couldn't move, paralyzed," he said.

Some happier times during his service was when they would anchor near an island and go ashore for a few hours.

"We weren't allowed to have any more than two beers," he said.

Another happier time was when the carrier returned to the states to pick up more aircraft.

"We came back to San Francisco. Me and three other guys commandeered a taxi and went into San Francisco for four hours," he said.

While serving on the Yorktown, Stuart had five different captain. His favorite, J.J. Clark, was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian.

"He was a graduate of the Naval Academy and he taught us a lot. He said (to the crew), 'You can make one mistake but don't make another.' He save our lives with what he taught us."

One high point of battle came in April of 1945, during the second Battle of the Philippine Seas.

"We sunk the biggest battleship in the world, the Yamato. It was huge. That thing was a monster," he said.

A few months later, the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Stuart's fleet moved in for an attack on the islands of Japan.

"That last day, we had one of the largest attacks by the Japanese that we had for weeks," he said.

"I didn't vote for Truman but I supported what he did -- he saved a million injuries and deaths by dropping that bomb," he said.

A force was being grouped for an invasion of the Japanese islands. The mission was expected to be very dangerous.

"I got orders to be the communication officer for 200 marines. Thankfully, I got another set of orders in 72 hours to go back to the states," he said. "Getting there was another story."

The Yorktown went on to bring forces into the actual invasion of Japan and Stuart was faced with the complicated task of getting home. Enter Jacob's Ladder.

There's a device that consists of a heavy cable and a makeshift chair that's connected to two ships. Stuart would sit in the chair of the Jacob's Ladder and swing from the Yorktown to a destroyer, back and forth, until he made it to the destroyer's deck. From there, he would try to board a CVE -- a smaller carrier -- to a DE, which took him back to Ulithi.

"I got on a merchant tanker, which was union, and they would not unload their oil. So me and two other guys unloaded the oil for the Army barges down below and they we were off," he said.

By the time he reached his home soil, the Yorktown had already anchored there. Stuart found himself at a separation center in Nashville, Tenn., where he met Carol Filter, a naval nurse.

"I was with a small dispensary of Navy nurses," she said. "He was a communications officer there. He had a cold and I gave him some medicine. That was in November of 1945."

In time, the two began dating. She remained in service from 1944 until 1946, ending her service as a lieutenant junior grade.

"He outranked me," she laughed. On July 12, 1946, the two married, later having children Terry and Debbie. He spent time as a plant manager of Malta Manufacturing but eventually retired as a district sales manager with Certainteed, located in Waco, TX.

Though many decades divide his war service and today, Stuart keeps close ties with his fellow former sailors. The carrier U.S.S. Yorktown CV-10 is now harbored in Charleston Harbor, S.C., and he serves on the board of directors of that ship. Each year, the crew of that fleet reunites to make sure the bonds made in war are never broken.

"We've kept in touch with this association," he said. "I became a member in June 1948. We've been to 38 to 40 reunions all over the country but we're losing a lot of (our members). We just had a reunion and we lost 57. We can't forget them. We can't forget."