Posted on 12/07/2006 5:45:29 PM PST by loreldan
Around this time every year, Joe Fenton’s mind wanders back to the preview he had of the destruction that would be unleashed on Pearl Harbor.
Just 17 years old and six months removed from boot camp, Fenton was an oiler on the USS Boise as it escorted five merchant ships carrying air base construction materials across the Pacific to the Philippines. After midnight on the morning of Nov. 28, 1941, the light cruiser’s loudspeakers blared with orders for crew members to man their battle stations.
Fenton scrambled to the deck and saw two dozen ships of unknown origin about 3 miles away on the horizon, heading east. They were
silhouetted by moonlight that would have blinded the fleet to the Boise’s presence.
Greatly outnumbered and under orders to maintain radio silence, the Boise did not fire and did not alert anyone for days to what it had seen.
When the Boise reached Manila, officers alerted members of Gen. Douglas Mac-Arthur’s staff of their find, Fenton said. Their reaction, as he recalled, was: “They’ve got as much right to be in the water as we do.”
It was only when word came down Dec. 7 about the Pearl Harbor attack that Fenton and his shipmates realized they had seen the fleet that brought America into World War II. While the Boise hid by a remote Pacific island after the attack and awaited orders, talk buzzed about what its crew could have done.
That conversation has dimmed today; most crew members have passed away. But Fenton, a retired Colorado Springs plumbing company owner, replays the talk to himself.
“I always think that perhaps we could have prevented the whole thing . . . if we had got the alarm off,” the 82-year-old said last week in his kitchen. “I always think: ‘Maybe I could have prevented this.’ I get real sad about it.”
But he said that thought is followed quickly by the realization that if the Boise had made any move that could have alerted the Japanese it had seen them, the fleet would bombarded it into the pages of history.
“I think the whole picture of World War II would have changed if we had just gotten a radio off,” he added. “But it would have cost my life.”
Memorial events across the country will mark the 65th anniversary today of the early morning raid that killed about 2,500 Americans. Some people will head to Hawaii to honor the occasion; others will gather at local monuments.
Fenton will be in Colorado Springs, surrounded by newspaper clips and medals that mark his Navy service and, later, the Army. His thoughts, though, will be on what he saw in the middle of the ocean.
No one present forgot that moment, which has been little recorded in history. Melvin Howard, a former crewman and current Philadelphia resident who once chaired reunions for the Boise, remembered that everyone on the ship was ready to fire if ordered.
“We never got the word to fire,” Howard said. “And it’s a good thing we didn’t, because they would have blown us out of the water.”
Once America entered the war, the Boise made 14 landings in the Pacific and in Europe, fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal and served as a scout vessel before the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.
The Boise earned its greatest accolades by sinking six Japanese ships in 27 minutes off Cape Esperance in 1942. Despite a shell crashing through a part of the ship in which he was working, Fenton, who fed oil into boilers and later was a ship engineer, remembers staying calm.
His mother, who raised him in Denver, saved newspaper articles about the ship and gave them to him in a scrapbook when he returned. Fenton also kept a diary during his service, and he typed it up in recent years to preserve it.
“Did not know what was going on, we were not at war, the ships all stopped and our gun turrets all trained to our port side,” he wrote of the November 1941 sighting. “That makes you wish you had gone to the bathroom a little earlier.”
After being transferred to the Army and serving a short stint in Asia during the Korean War, Fenton started a business in Colorado Springs. He ran Fenton Plumbing and Heating until retirement in 1982, when he passed the company on to his son.
He stops there for coffee every once in a while, and he carves wood figures for his family and friends. Twice widowed, the decorated veteran spends every Friday night dining and dancing at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post with his girlfriend.
Late 1941 is not that far away, though. Any mention of Pearl Harbor sparks thoughts of that day, and any thought about what he saw leads him to think even more about what could have occurred.
“They made no hostile moves to us,” Fenton said. “It was like two strangers passing in the night. We weren’t going to initiate the firing. There was no way we could have survived that.”
Sailed on November 26, and note the position given on Nov. 30 - this supposed sighting by Boise was Nov. 28 - the Phillipines are a considerable distance off the SW portion of the map. The Boise was never remotely near any Japanese fleet on November 28. It was initially claimed that 6 Japanese ships were sunk in the Battle of Cape Esperance - like most claims, turned out to be exaggerated once it could be evaluated after the war. It was only two Japanese ships.
Also, I just posted an article (a section, really) in the NYT regarding the rebulding of Pearl Harbor after the attack - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1750211/posts
Notice that on November 28th, the Japanese fleet would of been only two days out of Japan. What was the American ships doing off the coast of Japan, and five thousand miles north of the Philippines?
I haven't been able to determine whether Boise was coming from Hawaii or the West Coast.
Doesn't matter - either way, it wouldn't have been anywhere near Kido Butai on November 28.
Lest we forget, however, the Japanese had this thing called the Combined Fleet of which the "Striking Force" was just one element.
Other elements supported their thrust south against the Dutch and English, where in fact the attack against Malaya took place prior to Pearl Harbor by approximately one hour.
So CL BOISE liking saw those southern elements - troop carries included.
An often mentioned comment, from the US Army Pearl Harbor Hearings, to paraphrase is: " ... War Department G-2 advised COS on 26 November that the ONI reported a concentration of units of the Japanese fleet at an unknown port ready for offensive action. ..."
Also, it is very well known that the US Navy knew this location in some detail, as they provided logistical support there at an earlier time.
I don't know that you can describe any activity during that time-frame as routine. Don't forget there had been a lot of activity associated with reinforcing certain island outposts. (This is the reason the US carriers were not at Pearl during the attack.) We wouldn't have wanted the Japanese listening-in on supply movements.
You also have to remember that the Battle Fleet that was struck on 12/7/41 had just returned from maneuvers. The US Navy was getting ready for action.
Most expected the war to start in the Philippines. War Plan Orange called for the US Fleet to sail to the relief of McArthur's forces on Luzon. The US Fleet was preparing for that.
A more mundane reason would be the value of the vessels that Boise was escorting. A fleet oiler is a pretty important vessel, and as such is considered a high-value target.
I think the Japanese fleet would have bugged-out if discovered at that early stage. Carriers, it was assumed, were very vulnerable to land-based aviation. If the Japanese assault force had continued to sail toward Pearl, they would have risked a result similar to what had happened later at Midway (since theoretically they would have come within range of Pearl's aircraft before they could have gotten with range to launch their own.)
"The Boise earned its greatest accolades by sinking six Japanese ships in 27 minutes off Cape Esperance in 1942. Despite a shell crashing through a part of the ship in which he was working, Fenton, who fed oil into boilers and later was a ship engineer, remembers staying calm."
Nice job.
...and the Boise was almost sunk in that battle. The article also didn't mention that the reason the Boise didn't participate in the early part of the war was that she'd run aground.
Interesting footnote to history.
Wow, an amazing living history account.
It makes you wonder, in that huge world wide war, how many interesting things happened that we'll never hear about.
Interesting story here:
http://alumni.weber.edu/WSU%20Vista%20spring%202003.pdf
..from a guy who was also aboard the Boise, and remembers the sighting as happening just a few days before the 7th, and also remembers them radioing the information.
On the 28th, the Boise was ten days out of Pearl, en route to Manila. It arrived in Manila 7 days later. Looking at the chart of the attack group, that would have been one heck of a side-trip. So, I'm thinking your surmise about seeing the Japanese ships heading for Malaya or some such is probably correct. The navy got an intelligence report on the 5th from a Brit who'd seen the main invasion fleet sail, so I'd figure there was a lot of action in the South Pacific around that time.
...and here's another tale second hand from a Boise shipmate about them seeing a Japanese aircraft, not ships.
http://www.navyhistory.com/stories/Boise.html
If this story had been around a hundred years earlier, it'd probably have made it into Charles Mackay's book.
What they apparently did not know about was the training schedule for US Carriers, they expected to find them in Pearl as well as the Battleships (?).
Given the level of US proficiency in both aerial sea patrols and bombing (as with B17's) at that time, I don't think they had much to worry about.
On the other hand, they didn't launch the knock out last wave of attack aircraft on Pearl, turned home instead. Maybe there was a lack of confidence that could have turned them back because of a one cruiser encounter.
Remember that Doolittle launched despite just such an early trip wire.
PS: USS Nevada remains one of my all time top ten heroes; do your damnedest to go forth and confront the enemy.
The bottom line in this is that then, as now, we were (are) not aware of the new rules until the other guy demonstrates them to us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.