Lee Ebner US Navy USS West Virginia |
High on the signal bridge of the battleship USS West Virginia, twenty-one-year-old Lee Ebner, a native of Pineville, Kentucky, and three other signalmen looked out over Pearl Harbor packed with US Navy ships. In five minutes his 4:00 to 8:00 a.m. watch would be completed, and he was looking forward to breakfast. After a hard week of serious training at sea and the tension of feeling that a war with Japan was coming, the fleet was enjoying a lazy Sunday morning while moored in the womb of the harbor. The band was setting up on the USS Nevada behind him. A few of Ebner's 1, 541 fellow crew members were ashore attending church services, some were sleeping off a Saturday night hangover; those on duty were going about their business. Suddenly, two planes zooming in from his left at a hundred feet above water grabbed his full attention. Surely the Army Air Force was not making mock attacks on the ships anchored in battleship row, he thought. Then, as the roaring planes bored in toward his ship, the rising sun emblem glared at him and he knew. He saw the pilots' faces and head-fitting leather caps when the planes crossed the West Virginia's bow only fifty feet above him and less than a hundred yards to his front. But it didn't dawn on him that torpedoes were snaking their way through the water behind the planes. The passing planes drew Ebner's eyes to his right front onto two divebombers diving for the Navy airfield on Ford Island. He saw two bombs released, and followed them down. Just as the shock and sound waves arrived from their explosion, the "squawk box" barked, "General Quarters, General Quarters. This is no drill." Although things were breaking so fast that he could not take it all in, he knew this meant war. Someone said, "Get inside," and they darted into the silo-shaped superstructure that supported the signal bridge and the conning tower bridge and slammed the steel door shut. High above the main deck, his heart pounding, Ebner tried to figure out was was going on outside and wondered what he should do to stay alive. The signalmen didn't have a gun staton to man during general quarters, so he stayed put. Then the torpedoes with half-ton warheads smashed into the port side of his ship. The first salvo buckled the 16-inch armor belt well below the waterline and knocked out the ship's power. Standing in the dark, Ebner could not separate the noise of torpedo explosions from the other battle sounds, nor could he feel the West Virginia rolling to the left (fortunately, the order to counterflood the starboard side brought the ship upright), but he did feel the vibrations ripple through the ship's 680-foot steel body. The next two torpedoes ripped a hole almost 200 feet long in the ship's side. Ebner felt the ship shudder for what seemed like five minutes. Ebner's mind was racing: He wondered, "How are my friends making out?" "Were they really Japanese planes?" "How did they get here?" "What is coming next?" "Are there troop ships out there getting ready to invade Hawaii?" "What are my parents in Louisvillle going to think when they get the news?" and "What should I be doing?" Suddenly, a lull settled over battleship row, and someone said, "Let's get out and see what we can do." What Ebner saw when he stepped out into the light on the signal bridge overwhelmed him. He could neither believe nor comprehend the degree of destruction and wreckage. Trying to focus on events all around him, he saw that his ship was sitting on the bottom of the harbor. He looked at the thick smoke billowing up from the burning oil slick on the water forward and aft, and from a raging fire on the front end of his ship. He noted the neat hole made in the signal bridge by an unexploded bomb. Another bomb had detonated and killed his captain, Mervin S. Bennion. To the rear on his ship, he saw twisted metal and wreckage everywhere. A smokestack was missing; so was the ship's seaplane on the fantail, and the other one, on top of the No. 3 turret, was mangled. About 200 yards to his ship's right rear he could catch only glimpses of the Arizona through the thick smoke, but he knew she was in trouble and wondered how his friends on her were doing. He had no idea then that more than a thousand sailors were already entombed in her water-filled compartments with perhaps a few still alive in isolated air pockets. Immediately in front of the West Virginia he saw the Oklahoma do a slow roll to the left, rolling and rolling until she came to rest upside down. In the midst of this devastation, his best friend, Gene Merrill from Asheville, North Carolina, joined the men on the signal bridge, and the little group started moving toward the rescue boat. In this grim setting it was good to have his friend's company. They moved down flights of stairs to the main deck and forward along the port side toward the rescue boat, par of which was above the level of the top compartment near the rescue boat. Standing on the steps in water and oil up to his ankles and only his upper body above the main deck, Ebner formed a link in the rescue chain. He would bend down and hoist a limp form up to someone standing on the deck. When Ebner hauled them up into the light, he noted their faraway stares and how the whites of their eyes stood out against their blackened faces. After gently loading the six oil-soaked sailors on one boat, Ebner and seven other sailors from the West Virginia boarded another rescue boat and headed for the nearby submarine base, where they offloaded and moved under a shade tree, hoping to be out of sight of the Japanese planes of the second wave. Gloom and anxiety engulfed the little group. They didn't know the status of many friends; they had lost their home; of their personal things they only had what they wore on their backs. They didn't think they were a worthy target for the enemy planes, but they thought that an invasion might be coming any time. A thoughtful and brave lady came out of an officer's quarters and brought them a pan of sandwiches. The act of kindness in the midst of chaos was deeply appreciated. At 10:00 a.m. the attack ended. Two waves totaling 363 planes from six Japanese aircraft carriers had done their damage. Except for the three American aircraft carriers and their escorts, which were at sea, many ships of the US Pacific fleet either rested on the bottom of the harbor or where floating wrecks with raging fires burning out of control. As they walked to the assembly point for ship crews, Ebner saw smoke rising in patches throughout the harbor and on the airfields. He flet the enormity of the destruction and the sadness that hung over the island. At the assembly point, they joined about forty others from the West Virginia and signed in. Here they tried to figure out what was coming next, where they were going to be assigned, and who had survived. It would be some time before Ebner would learn that more than 2,000 Americans had been killed in the attack, including 101 crew members and a few officers from his own ship. That afternoon when they asked for men to stand watch on the Tennessee, Ebner, thinking he might have a new home, readily volunteered. The West Virginia had pined the Tennessee against Ford Island and protected it from the destructive power of the torpedoes. Ebner's old ship, though, was still burning, and he helped fight the fire. On the waterline near the starboard side of the Tennessee, he saw a dead Japanese pilot lying face down with his parachute at his side. He didn't dwell on it. He figured he would see more of them. As darkness approached, soldiers and sailors alike became nervous and so trigger-happy that when American planes came in, antiaircraft guns opened up all around. The next day Ebner and a friend were assigned to a destroyer, the USS Mahan, and they went to sea, leaving the catastrophic Pearl Harbor scene behind physically but would never leave his mind. |
Information provided by Lee Ebner. |
