Arthur J. Morsch US Navy USS New Orleans |
I was a second-class firecontrolman at the time with a battle station in the after super-structure. When general quarters sounded, I was below decks in the Optical Shop getting ready to go to breakfast. I immediately started running through the ship to reach ladders going up to my battle station. When I stepped out onto the boat deck (a metal deck that held all of our launches, motor boats, etc., when we were underway), I noticed a plane flying alongside of the ship on our starboard side. It dropped a bomb that landed between our ship and three others, causing a fire to break out in the forward section of the ship but no other damage. The plane then circled and made a strafing run over our ship, again flying down the starboard side. I noticed orange spots appearing in the front of the plane and then heard bullets ricocheting off the metal deck I was standing on. As the plane passed by, I could see the pilot looking at me and laughing. I still had no idea of what was taking place, but as I started up the last ladder reaching to my battle station, I could look over towards battleship row and see the battleships blowing up and burning. As I was a director pointer on the 8" battery and we couldn't use the large guns, I was sent back below decks to assist in an ammunition handling party. It was the men who were carrying the 5" projectiles from my area to the guns topside that passed by our sick bay on the way. Our chaplain, Howell Forgy, was stationed at the sickbay and as the men passed he would slap them on the back and say, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition". This phrase became so popular throughout our ship and others that a song was later written about it. Probably the strangest situation that occurred to our ship during the attack was the fact that because of sabotage that had been done during an overhaul in Bremerton, WA, during the month of October 1941, the ship was ordered to the Navy yard in Pearl Harbor when we arrived there the middle of November, 1941. We moored to a dock in the Navy yard and were there when the attack started. Because we were moored to the dock, the Japanese planes couldn't reach us with torpedoes, whereas, if we had been anchored at our normal berthing spot, we would have been torpedoed. So the person who sabotaged the ship in Bremerton actually saved us from being torpedoed. Our ship later went to sea to participate in seventeen naval battles including the Battle of Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, invasion of Guadalcanal, etc. The major damage we sustained during WWII was getting torpedoed the night of November 30, 1942, during the Battle of Tassafaronga. That resulted in our bow being blown off with a loss of 178 officers and men. |
Information provided by Arthur J. Morsch. |
