Leroy D. Peffer USS Navy USS Vestal |
It was blazing hot in the scullery of the repair ship USS Vestal. Breakfast was ending and 19-year-old LeRoy Peffer, an electrician, had drawn mess duty that Sunday morning. He was finishing the thankless task of loading and unloading steam-trays from a steam-cleaner after they'd been run through the dishwasher. Like all sailors when they endured that job, Peffer fought the heat by wearing nothing but a bathing suit and rubber shoes; sometimes he'd have to pause to pour sweat out of the shoes. The 12,500-ton Vestal that morning was tied up next to the battleship USS Arizona at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. It was getting close to 8 a.m. Peffer could hear a commotion when the bombing started, but he had no idea what was going on. Was it a training exercise? Suddenly the ship's chief master at arms ran through, and Peffer asked, What's going on out there? "He told me, 'Them are Japs, and the bastards are here for no good,' " Peffer said. "And he told me to get down to my locker and get dressed." Peffer ran to his locker. Meanwhile, the chief walked on across the mess hall. Explosion on Arizona The first of two bombs to hit the Vestal struck the starboard side, crashing through three decks, the upper crew spaces and exploding in the stores hold, blowing the chief to pieces and igniting a fire in the forward part of the ship. Peffer had raced topside to the bedlam. He saw Japanese planes dropping torpedoes that headed directly for the Vestal. But the Japanese, he said, had gotten hold of U.S. battleship plans and knew how to cause maximum damage to the floating arsenal. The torpedoes, therefore, were set at depths that took them underneath the Vestal, striking the skin of the battleships. "Every time I saw one of those planes come in and let go with his torpedo, I prepared myself for the shock of the explosion," Peffer said. "But the explosion was on the battleship." Bomb explosions, meanwhile, created huge geysers that shot up between the two ships, and the mooring lines holding them together snapped like threads. The Vestal was rocking so badly the crew could barely tell when a second bomb hit the ship aft, passing through the carpentry shop, shipfitter shops and the hull and exploding in the mud below. "So we had a big hole aft and we were pumping water forward to put the fire out, and we were sinking pretty good," he said. The Vestal crew was organized to pass and load ammunition for the ship's 3-inch anti-aircraft gun. But the gun jammed after firing the first round. Crew Rescue Cmdr. Cassin Young, the ship's commanding officer, ran to the gun tub to see what was wrong and got the gun working. He was standing at a gun when a bomb crashed through the Arizona's upper deck, detonating its forward black powder magazine. The force of the devastating Arizona blast blew Young and about 100 other men, including Peffer, off the Vestal and hurled them over the side. "It was like someone had taken and pushed me hard and I went over the lifelines and into the water," Peffer said. Peffer was somewhat protected from the force of the blast by the gun tub. He was on the Vestal's starboard side; the port side was tied up to the Arizona. Had he been on the port side, he said, "I'd have been blown right in two." He was rescued by men aboard the ship's officer motor launch. |
Information provided by Leroy D. Peffer. |
